Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=05/10/2003

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01326

TITLE=IRAQ AND THE MIDDLE EAST

INTERNET=Yes

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0038

CONTENT=

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Host: Will the U-S victory in Iraq bring change to the Middle East? Next, On the Line.

[music]

Host: President George W. Bush has said that he hopes the liberation of Iraq will usher in a new era in the Middle East of growing freedom and democratization. With help from the U-S-led coalition, Iraqis are taking steps toward creating a government that respects their rights. A new plan known as the road map has been introduced to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. It looks forward to the creation of a democratic Palestine. The U-S has also warned Iran and Syria not to meddle in Iraq and to stop their support for terrorism. And now that the threat from Iraq has been eliminated, U-S troops will be leaving Saudi Arabia. What effects will the liberation of Iraq have on the politics of the region? I'll ask my guests: Leon Fuerth, research professor at George Washington University and former National Security Advisor to Vice President Al Gore; Ali Al-Ahmed, director of the Saudi Institute; and Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Welcome and thanks for joining us today. Leon Fuerth, has there been a fundamental change in the Middle East?

Fuerth: I was thinking about the question before we went on and of course there are going to be many changes, but the most important question is what changes at heart? Because the systems that we're trying to impose will or won't work depending upon how millions of people actually feel about them. And those attitudes are not easy to predict, except that they're human beings and therefore it's going to be hard to change the way they view events.

Host: Ali Al-Ahmed is this a matter primarily of how people in the region perceive it? If there's to be a move toward democratization, I would take it there has to be some effort from people at the grassroots level to support democracy.

Al-Ahmed: Well, the people in the region, they are looking for a key thing. They want their dignity back. They've been deprived from dignity for over fifty years or maybe more. They want their freedom. They love democracy. They want to be able to practice whatever they think and believe. The problem is how do you do it? I think the United States needs to be educated more on the process of approaching people and accommodating them. One word can make things better, but in general, I think people are receptive to the idea of changing. And people are asking -- I've talked to many people in the region and they are saying -- you know, "We want America to overthrow our government too." And "We need freedom and democracy."

Host: Clifford May, do you think that there's going to be a significant and lasting change and what sort of change?

May: Let's understand that there has been change already in that Saddam Hussein, a brutal dictator who has oppressed and slaughtered his own people for twenty-five years, more than that, has now been eliminated from the region. His people have been freed and a threat to the United States is now gone. That's changed, that's absolutely changed. Now there's also an opportunity, particularly for the people of Iraq, but also for the people of the region. If Iraq does become free, democratic and prosperous, that will have tremendous repercussions, for the reasons Ali states. Others are going to look over in Iraq and say, why can't I have freedom and democracy and prosperity too. If they can have it, why can't I? But, recognize this. Iraq has neighbors who do not wish it well, who do not wish the U-S well. In particular, I mean Syria, I mean Saudi Arabia and I mean Iran. I don't think any of them have an interest in seeing a free, prosperous and democratic Iraq. I think we have to watch very carefully for ways in which they try to turn Iraq into another Lebanon, which is in fact precisely what Syrian president or dictator Bashar Assad has threatened to do.

Host: Leon Fuerth, are the countries surrounding Iraq going to try to turn it into another Lebanon?

Fuerth: I think they'll simply try to prevent the United States from having unlimited sway in Iraq by any means they can think of. And by the way, you can use my first name -- it'll be a lot easier for me if you do. I am thinking that we've been working on democracy in the United States for over two centuries and it's still a question of practice, practice. I'm really skeptical that, because we have conquered a country, we automatically cross a line and they will quickly become democratic. We are struggling in other places.

May: I don't think anybody's making that case, Leon. I don't think anybody's saying that there are any guarantees or that it will be easy. Giving people an opportunity is not the same as giving people a guarantee. Will it be better than what we've seen in the past? Hopefully. Although again, if somebody like Assad of Syria tries to make it into another Lebanon, by which I mean, there are suicide bombings, there are attempts to do what Hezbollah did in 1983 to the United States and Beirut, blow them out of there and make them leave with their tail between their legs, it's going to be a problem and it could get pretty bad. But again, it is not negligible to say we're giving an opportunity to people to find a better destiny and we'll assist in every way. And that's very important. The U-S has to really make a full-court press here to help the Iraqi people. By the way, the other thing that I think is useful to remember here is you're not starting absolutely from scratch. The Kurdish areas, which have been autonomous, free of Saddam Hussein for more than a decade, they are right now substantially free, substantially democratic, substantially prosperous. What you really want to do is spread what you have in Kurdistan right now to the Shia and to the Sunni areas of Iraq. If you can do that, you've got to say it's a remarkable achievement and it will have ramifications not just for Iraq, not just for the U-S, but for the region, indeed for the world.

Al-Ahmed: But I think the United States must also show its commitment to democracy. In the past few weeks there has been a lot of regional attempt to influence the U-S policy in Iraq. Overturning minority government, another Saddam, another Sunni leader, that's not going to work. If you are saying democracy has to be majority rule, you might not like it immediately, but in the long run it will work for you because democratic governments tend to be friendly with democratic governments, not as hostile.

May: They cannot go to war as easily. America may disagree with France, but they're not going to go to war.

AL-Ahmed: Yes, exactly. And a minority government, in order to continue, they will use brutality. Saddam Hussein, if he was a Shia, he would not have been as brutal as he was, not because of Shia and Sunni, but because he would not have needed to use these extreme tactics to kill and murder people. I think we have to really be committed to the people of Iraq regardless of the region or of the Iranians who are trying to slow the process and the Saudis who are trying to reinstate and the Jordanians who are doing the same. The Jordanians are doing the Saudis' bit in Iraq right now.

Fuerth: How long do you think the United States needs to stay before, let's say before the glue sets?

Al-Ahmed: You know, the United States has been in the Philippines for over a hundred years and in Korea for thirty-five years. Why not Iraq? I think this is a crucial country, a very important country. And I think, not militarily, I don't think there is a need for a military [presence] for a long time, maybe a couple of years and then things will settle down.

May: I basically agree with you, although I would say the following: that there will be, there is a need for a long-time presence, but that presence will change over time. Right now is the most intense. As democratic institutions are set up it will be less, but I do think there's a possibility of a democratic Iraq, if it evolves, having military defense partnerships with the U-S.

Al-Ahmed: Look at Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia the Americans have been there for what, fifteen years now, and it works for the United States policy.

Host: Leon, let me ask you to answer your own question. How long do you think it takes for the glue to set?

Fuerth: I sometimes don't have answers for my own questions. I just have faith that the questions are the right ones. And one of the follow-on questions is are we going to face a dilemma such that if we stay there long enough for the glue to set, we will stay there long enough to overstay our welcome.

May: That's a good question, but I think there is a good answer to it. And that is, once you set up democratic institutions, you will know when you've overstayed your welcome. In fact, the U-S really shouldn't be anywhere that isn't democratic with its military because only in a democratic society do you know whether you're there with the consent of the population. You don't know that in a dictatorship. You don't know that in Saudi Arabia, whether they want you or not. But in a democratic country, they can throw you out. They threw us out of Subic Bay in the Philippines. That's okay, we should accept that, as we did. They can throw us out of a democratic country and that's part of the price we pay for having democracies around the world and it's a good thing.

Host: Leon?

Fuerth: I have a lot of faith in democracy and given the circumstances we're in, we have to press forward. But, I have a lot of experience now and I'm not going to set aside the sense of how difficult it really is to get people who have not known what democracy is -- know the word but not the practice, not the feel, to actually adapt it. We said that we were going to give Haiti a chance using exactly the same words that you did. Best shot that we could at it. But something in Haitian, domestic politics proved impossible to budge and their system remains sort of un-plused. And it's tough sledding. It just doesn't fall into place the way the administration tends to project it.

Al-Ahmed: You keep using the Haitian model. Why don't you use the Bosnian model, the Kosovo model? Why don't you use the other six or so models? I think it's a matter of commitment. If the U-S is committed and the people of Iraq are not the people of Haiti education-wise and there's a reason the people of Iraq have not known democracy, it's because of their past policies that have said: "Oh, let's contain them. If he's killing his people we don't care. As long as he's not hurting our policies." And that I think should change in the strategic vision of the United States. We should not allow dictators to kill their people.

May: Nothing is guaranteed and no one is saying, I hope, certainly no one at this table that any of it's going to be easy. And it may indeed be that Haiti is the example. But as Ali says, it may be Kosovo or Russia. Russia's hardly a Jeffersonian democracy but it's better than it was under communism. And again, we do have the example of Kurdistan. It may be the Iraqis are not capable of achieving democracy. It may be the Arabs are not capable of it. But I'm not willing to say at this point that I've given up either on Iraq or on the Arabs in terms of freedom and democracy. I think they may be able to handle it.

Fuerth: Your position, I think, is quite reasonable. I tend to always be shadow-boxing with the presence of the administration in these discussions. And in the case of Russia, I remember in the year 2000 the slogan was "Who lost Russia?" We knew we hadn't lost Russia. We knew it was approximately where you said it was, somewhere along its own path and that we had helped it get there instead of someplace worse. The main point is that we'll see how apt the Iraqi people are for democracy as this process goes along. But the bias in what the administration presents is: "Okay, get rid of the dictator, set up an interim government." One that's going to support our line of course. And all of a sudden the Iraqi people will make democracy work. They will if somehow they decide the compromise is honorable and learn how to do it.

Ali Al-Ahmed: I think that the Iraqi people -- it's not like many pundits have said: "Oh they don't know what the word democracy [means]." And so on. These are people who were the first humans to write laws and to have a history and civilization as rich as Iraq. Iraq is, I think, one of the most promising examples and if the U-S is committed we will see very nice results.

Host: Ali I do want to widen the discussion a bit to the region and one of the most immediate changes to follow on the liberation of Iraq is of course the announcement that U-S troops are going to be leaving Saudi Arabia. How significant is that move in Saudi politics?

Al-Ahmed: I think the move basically takes away many reasons for the extremists and people who are against the U-S presence as a reason to oppose the government. But today, just today, there are nineteen al-Qaida members on the lose in Saudi Arabia who [were arrested] after a gun battle last night with the forces. The government that was weaker, it saw the U-S presence as assurance of its survival and now they don't see it that way. The government is not sincere about reforming and moving ahead with the policy.

May: Let me just point out a little bit of irony here. Osama bin Laden has explained that his motivation for attacking the U-S as brutally as he did on nine-eleven was three-fold. One, the most important reason, was the presence of U-S troops, infidel troops, on Saudi soil. Two, were the sanctions on Iraq. The third had to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Now, of those three, number one is already gone. That reason's gone. The U-S, we're leaving Saudi soil. The sanctions are only on Iraq at this point because the U-N and the European Union want them there. The U-S is eager to get them off the successor government of Saddam Hussein. Really, if Osama bin Laden were to be consistent, he would be attacking the United Nations now, not the United States because they're the ones insisting on sanctions on Iraq.

Fuerth: I'd like to remind you that it was on the target list.

[laughter]

May: That's a good point. Your point is well taken.

Al-Ahmed: He sees the U-N as an infidel organization too.

Host: Leon Fuerth, what kind of example there does it set if the U-S, having said that its reason for having troops in Saudi Arabia was to protect Saudi Arabia from Iraq, then the threat from Iraq is gone, the U-S takes its troops out of Saudi Arabia. One would think that that would help the U-S in the region to some extent.

Fuerth: I don't know. In my mind these things go to human nature. And we have a saying about available work expands to fill available time. Well, it may be that available hatred expands to fill available opportunities. We will, hopefully, in a reasonable world, if you remove the state cause, then people's emotions should change. This is an experiment. We'll find out whether as we remove the stated cause their feelings toward us change or shift to some other justification.

May: You're right. And actually you're making the same point I was making, albeit I was making it sarcastically. I do not think Osama bin Laden's going to sit in his cave now and say: "Well, they've met our demands. It's okay." Because it was never about those demands. It was about trying to destroy a civilization, trying to destroy the free world. And that's another thing that has to be as part of this discussion, yes, we hope to spread freedom and democracy and prosperity to other countries around the world. But let's be realistic, the reason we were in Iraq had much more to do with, our first order of business was to get rid of a dictator, a meglomaniac, an anti-American who was a terrorist master, who we believed represented a threat to the U-S. That was very much high on the list. Secondarily, but importantly, we were able to liberate the people of Iraq and also eliminate a threat to the region. People say: "Well, which one is it?" No, no, no, beer can taste great and be less filling too. You can have multiple reasons and when you put them together, you have a war that is just, because a people deserve to be freed, necessary because this is a real threat and winnable, which this war obviously was, that is the point at which you say: "Okay, it's time to go." You don't always say it, but those are the times you do.

Host: Ali, you said that the regime in Saudi Arabia saw the U-S presence as bolstering its position. Do you believe that in reality now that the U-S is leaving Saudi Arabia that that as a result weakens the Saudi regime?

Al-Ahmed: It will weaken the Saudi regime, which will lead it to become more extremist, because now the base that the Saudi government really stands on is the Najdi base, the middle, the center, which is mostly Wahabbi, what I call the two Wahabbi kinds: the religious Wahabbi and the whisky Wahabbi. These people are in the middle, because they are political Wahabbi. They don't practice the religion really. It's the Najdi domination of the region, which was emphasized in the cabinet reshuffle in which they expanded the strength of the central region in power. So, this region is, by default, an extremists region, religiously, and they are going to impose more religious doctrines on their population because this is their grassroots. They don't have grassroots in the East or in the South or in the West, so they have to rely on the center, which means that they would become, sort of, they would move to the right or become less reformist.

Fuerth: Part of what the president's vision for post-Saddam was, as he laid out in his speech, was that with him gone democracy would start to spread elsewhere. And there's a short list of other elsewheres that would be of concern, that would include Saudi Arabia and Egypt. One could add a few others. But your description of what's going to happen at least in the immediate aftermath sounds like things are going to become less rather than more stable in Saudi Arabia. So, going to your basic question, is the fall of Saddam Hussein a sure fire ticket to the spread of democracy and stability in the region?

Al-Ahmed: Not necessarily, not in every case. I think in Iran it will be, in Syria it might be.

May: It's not and no one ever claimed it. But I think, also, you have to separate two goals. One goal, one possible goal, is stability. One goal is democracy. I'm not sure you can achieve democracy and stability at the same time. You may have to have one or the other.

Al-Ahmed: Less stability.

May: Less stability may be more democracy. After all, it's only through some destabilization that you're going to have either the kind of reforms in Saudi Arabia that one might wish for.

Al-Ahmed: You can't pull the carpet without the guy falling. You know, who's standing on it. You can't have democracy without moving the stability.

Host: So is a democratic change then inherently a risky proposition?

Fuerth: It's not a safe business. We got democracy in this country as the result of a revolution. And the case that comes to mind is Iran and the Shah, because I was around at the time when the Shah's power was crumbling, and there was an attitude, at least there had been for some time -- not just in the U-S public, but even inside the government -- that said if this repressive regime were somehow to go away, you might get a stable democratic regime. It went away. Perhaps it deserved to go away, but [look at] what we got.

Al Ahmed: I don't think maybe I really lay the blame on the U-S for that because there was a chance there in the beginning for a true democracy. They had free elections there in the beginning in Iran. And then somehow when the war started and the U-S was on the other side, I think, they lost it.

Fuerth: Not so free. I was there as it happens in 1979 as a foreign correspondent. And the so-called free elections were not secret ballot and you had members of [Ayatollah] Khomeini's clergy at every polling booth. That to me was not a free election. But you also had, by the way, most of the U-S press. Left-wing press for sure, but even a lot of the centrist press saying: "This is wonderful. This is great. This is a progressive revolution." Part of what happened was that the left wing in Iran had faith in the Ayatollah and the clergy and they came together and the left didn't see that the esteem and respect that they felt for the Ayatollah Khomeini was not going to be reciprocated and that once he had power he would disenfranchise them, not to say kill and imprison them, which he did.

Host: Leon, we have a little less than a minute left. To what extent do the rulers in Iran see the prospect for democratic success in Iraq as a threat to their regime?

Fuerth: I think it removes a rationale for the kind of power the conservative party of the government holds against the will of the bulk of the population.

Al-Ahmed: I think it is very important here, in religious terms: Najaf, which is in Iraq, is the mother of all Shia religious centers. Qom, in Iran, this power, this sort of source of religion would move to Iraq. People in Iran will be following the religious leaders in Iraq, not vice versa.

May: If Iraq succeeds the people in Iran will say: "Why not us?" and that will be destabilizing for Iran but possibly democratizing over time and we've got to hope that's the way it goes.

Host: I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today. I'd like to thank my guests: Leon Fuerth of George Washington University, Ali Al-Ahmed of the Saudi Institute and Clifford May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Before we go, I'd like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can e-mail them to Ontheline@ibb.gov For On the Line, I'm Eric Felten.