What if Bush wins a second term? What will that mean for us, the US, and the world, asks Gamil Matar* There are two possibilities should Bush be re-elected -- either he will retain the same course and policies, or he will seek to improve on his first term. In the first case Bush will keep the same neo-con advisers who surround him, the people who hi-jacked US policy during the first term. In the second case he would have to change his team, sacking many key advisers. The make-up of a second Bush administration has been a matter of much speculation in Arab capitals, particularly those where leaders find it advisable to support Bush's re-election. And Arab governments, we should remember, have a long tradition of supporting incumbent US presidents. US diplomats want governments in the Arab and Islamic world to behave as if the Bush administration's policies have succeeded. And lo and behold, Arab and Muslim officials have scrambled to voice support for Bush's policies, at least in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are trying to help the US president out in Palestine, not least by organising a conference in support of Iraqi elections, an initiative that has gone down well with Bush and his clique. We are engaged in reform, as the US demands, and we are even attempting to drag some religious institutions and practices into line. The organisers of Bush's campaign can rest assured that the president's messianic message and pre-emptive wars are bearing fruit beyond anyone's expectations. Arab officials maintain the hope that President Bush will replace the clique that surrounds him following his re-election. Arab political elites, convinced that the neo-cons have fomented hatred for the US among Arab and Islamic nations, appear equally convinced that President Bush is not tarred with the same neo- con brush. Yet it is possible to argue, and convincingly so, that President Bush cannot continue to rule the US without this clique. Bush may have had no hand in formulating neo-conservative doctrine -- most of these ideas have been developing since the Reagan administration, flourishing gradually over time -- but I really cannot envisage a scenario in which a newly elected Bush suddenly abandons the highly organised network of people who have turned those ideas into policy. If Bush is going to get rid of any one, it will most probably be an outsider, with Colin Powell the most likely candidate. Few US elections have taken place against a backdrop of such international concern. Americans have never been more worried, less secure, and more fearful for their country's future than they are now. This, at least, is the diagnosis of one influential US writer. America, he continues, is held together by increasingly tenuous threads. The US constitution has been twisted to serve the short-term interests of the privileged. A similar diagnosis applies to other countries. Palestine and Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Arabian Peninsula and Sudan, all face unprecedented turmoil. Can anyone have confidence in the future well- being of the Palestinians if Bush were re-elected? During his first term Bush presided over the collapse of international diplomacy vis-�-vis the Palestinian issue and there is nothing to indicate that things will get better should he be re-elected. Indeed, the Palestinians themselves expect the worst, with some predicting that the Palestinian leadership will be deported to Tunisia, where preparations are already being made to receive it. Others expect a deal to be reached regarding the Palestinians, the shape of which will be determined by Zionist intellectual terrorism, US fundamentalist terrorism, and Arab defeatism. And what of Iraq under a second Bush administration? Bush is not going to pull out of Iraq, and the Iraqis, unlike some Gulf states, are not going to accept the continued presence of US troops on their soil. President Bush and his clique say the war against terror is endless. And yet they refuse to define terror. That deliberate ambiguity is clearly designed to leave the door open for a second Bush administration to intervene wherever it chooses, on the pretext that terrorism exists, or is about to exist, or that someone, somewhere, is protecting or financing terrorists. A second Bush administration would work, determinedly and efficiently, to turn the clash of civilisation from theory into practice. Modern terrorism, we should remember, originated in the West, in Italy, Germany, and the US. Yet many persist in spreading the misconception -- and for purely doctrinal reasons -- that terrorism is unique to the Islamic world, conveniently ignoring the reappearance of the phenomena in many Latin and Central American countries, and in Africa. Over the past four years the Bush administration has managed to discredit the workings of US democracy in the eyes of the world. It is now viewed with suspicion almost everywhere, a fact that those in Washington who constantly promote democracy as an answer to the world's problems should surely take into account. And what message would be spelled out by the re- election of a government that has incited a tidal wave of anti-Americanism, that has divided the transatlantic alliance, infringed on domestic freedoms by spreading panic in every town and every home, that has used patriotism to restrict freedom of expression and that has driven the media to the verge of crisis? If Bush wins a second term his strategists will seek to further co-opt religion for political ends. The US president would thank God for blessing America. Fundamentalist currents would flex their muscles even more than we have already witnessed and the Zionist- evangelical alliance will gain in strength. And those who want to compete with an administration that has co-opted religious slogans will be tempted to do the same. The Democrats have already done so, and the example is likely to be followed elsewhere. A European acquaintance recently told me that a Democrat win will not change much. America, he argued, was ripe for Bush and his clique to mount their putsch. Under Bush or Kerry the next four years are not going to be much different to the past four. The best we can hope remain cosmetic changes. * The writer is director of the Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic Research.
