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Once
again, I have been honored by the National Council on
US-Arab Relations and stand before you to offer a few
thoughts on where we - Americans and Arabs - go from
here. Rereading what I said to this conference about
this in 2001, 2002, and 2003, I am pleased to find that
I got a few things right. This year I am far less
confident I can see the future.
Seven weeks before elections in this country, neither candidate is saying
much, if anything, about how he would address the very
serious problems he will confront at home and abroad,
including in the Middle East. Instead, the parties are
engaged in an embarrassingly trivial debate about
whether John Kerry really earned his silver star in
Vietnam and whether George Bush did or did not make
himself available to bomb the Vietcong if they turned up
in Alabama. This is too bad. There are a lot of serious
questions before our country, our army, and our people.
What we decide and do greatly affect the world.
The past four years have established what honesty compels me to describe
as without doubt the most erratic foreign policy record
in our history. 9/11 showed the Administration's early
obsession with national missile defense and indifference
to more conventional terrorist threats to have been
fundamentally in error. Fortunately, the president
reacted effectively by rallying the country to fight the
"terrorists with global reach" who had attacked us.
But no sooner had we successfully dispersed al-Qa`ida's leaders and
punished their hosts in Afghanistan than we lurched off
"in search of" other "monsters to destroy" and invaded
Iraq. Ill-defined as they were, our objectives and
priorities in that new battlefield shifted with
kaleidoscopic ease under the ministrations of the
spin-doctors. WMD, then democratization.
Deba`athification, then remobilization. Improving the
lot of ordinary Iraqis, then restoring their oil
production and exports. Transformation of the region,
then killing the jihadis and anti-occupation rebels our
presence spawned. Now we're told that this hugely costly
adventure was really just about getting rid of one man -
Saddam Hussein. With the dictator exhumed from his
manhole, "mission accomplished." But for some, so far
unexplained reason, we nevertheless have to keep forces
in Iraq for at least another four years. Or is it five,
or twenty years?
The flip-flops, ad-hoc'ery, and confusion about objectives are not
limited to our policies on terrorism or Iraq. Consider
North Korea. The Administration first declared
Pyongyang's nuclear program intolerable, threatened dire
consequences, and refused to talk to the North Koreans
until they ended their program. When years of
all-stick-no-carrot diplomacy predictably failed, the
White House began to prepare us to live with a
nuclear-armed North Korea. Some suspect we are seeing
the same pattern with respect to Iran.
Then there's the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Disengagement, followed by
half-hearted diplomacy, followed by passivity. A roadmap
drawn, muttered over, revised, shelved, announced as a
major initiative, and then set aside. Israeli military
incursions in the occupied territories opposed, then
endorsed. Israeli unilateralism condemned, then
acquiesced in, and finally applauded. Negotiations by
Americans with Israelis and Palestinians, then with
Israelis alone, and now only among Israelis, with no
American input except from the Israeli lobby here.
I have catalogued only a fraction of the numerous examples of this
amazing pattern of strategic about-faces, convulsions,
and abdications. It's hard to imagine how it could get
worse. But if George Bush and Dick Cheney are right, and
perhaps they are, John Kerry and John Edwards would be
equally or even more spastic and inconstant as
policymakers. Apparently, whoever wins, the United
States will continue to vex and alarm the world with
idiosyncratic and erratic actions abroad. This is not
encouraging.
Come on, guys! There are issues of peace and war that you know and we all
know you will have to deal with if you are elected.
Serious, real problems with major consequences for the
United States and the world. Is it asking too much for
you to reassure us that you are at least thinking about
these issues by telling us something about how you
expect to manage them?
How about explaining to us:
What are we now trying to accomplish in the war in
Afghanistan beyond running down Osama Binladen? What
would victory look like? Are we into long-term
nation-building in Afghanistan? What's the end game or
is this the forever war?
What do we need to accomplish in Iraq to enable us to claim success for
our invasion and occupation of that nation? In a region
in which we kill one enemy and get five free, what needs
to happen to let us stop killing Iraqis and other Arabs
and being killed by them?
With Arabs concluding that Americans are indifferent to their suffering
and untroubled by injustice and Americans equating Islam
with terrorism, the estrangement between Americans and
the Muslim fifth of the human race continues to deepen.
By every measure available, the pool of potential
recruits for terrorism against the United States and the
long-term danger to our country from aggrieved Muslims
are expanding. How do you propose to reverse these
trends? If they cannot be reversed, what further
measures do you propose to restore our security and
domestic tranquility while preserving our civil
liberties?
Given all the threats that neo-conservatives and right-wing Israelis have
uttered, level with us, please. If you're elected, is
the invasion of Iran a serious prospect? How about
Syria? What does all the current demagoguery against the
Saudi royal family portend for policy?
What do you propose to do about the mounting bloodshed in the Holy Land?
Let it burn? Whatever Sharon asks you to do? Or
something else? If so, what?
What are you going to do about the acknowledged "genocide" in Darfur?
What role do you foresee for a liberated Iraq in the balance of power and
security in the Persian Gulf? What role for the GCC or
other Arabs in defending themselves?
How do you propose to deal with the requirement of Arab states for a
deterrent against nuclear attack, once Iran joins Israel
in acquiring nuclear weapons?
I also wouldn't mind hearing what you intend to do about the Korean
nuclear issue, which now apparently has a South as well
as a North Korean dimension. Or about the Taiwan issue
and China. Or about Russia. Or about rebuilding
relations with allies and reestablishing a mutually
productive relationship with the United Nations.
And, with some of our most senior economists telling us that there is a
75% chance of a dollar collapse sometime over the next
five years, I think it might be helpful for you to tell
us what you propose to do about the budget, trade, and
balance of payments deficits that threaten both our
national prosperity and the global economy.
Ladies and gentlemen, I was asked to tell you where I thought we might go
from here. I apologize for not doing so. But I've given
up on the possibility of either the media or the
Congress asking the questions that need to be asked of
our presidential candidates and other politicians. As in
the run-up to the Iraq invasion, both have defaulted on
their responsibility to question those who lead or
aspire to lead us. So I have fallen back on asking these
questions myself.
If I've asked the wrong questions, please step forward and ask the right
ones. Maybe, if we all ask with sufficient insistence,
one or the other of the candidates will actually address
an issue or two. That would be most welcome. I, for one,
would like to be reassured that we're going somewhere
better than where we've been.
Thank you.
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