Bush Muddles the Mideast

When I was in Cairo this summer, the Arab Street was busy. The bazaars bustled with shoppers and the bikers and pedestrians gave ground to trucks and scooters amidst the harum-scarum commerce practiced in stalls up and down the Old Islamic Quarter. On Friday hundreds of men and women streamed out of Al-Hussein Mosque, and while I sat and watched, drinking apple tea, a watermelon cart owner did a brisk business selling his wares to the parched masses.

This, I imagine, is not the Arab Street of today. Demonstrators are packing Cairo University to demand that Egypt and Jordan sever their diplomatic ties to Israel. Already the president of Egypt has acquiesced by downgrading its diplomatic channels, but continues to turn back protesters from the Israeli Embassy with water cannons and tear gas. This is the atmosphere in which the Arab League will anxiously convene on Wednesday.

My brief trip to the Middle East conflict, a three-week journey from Cairo to Istanbul, has not given me any cogent insight into the conflict. The columns and editorials I have read this week provide small bits of wisdom and less encouragement. Perhaps I feel like many of us do when confronted with this bloody, intractable mess when I simply want to throw my hands up in the air and exclaim, “The world is mad!”

I can say with some confidence, however, that the muddled Bush Doctrine is more than partly responsible for the madness. Let me not overstate the case; it is true that things were going downhill in the Middle East well before Sept. 11 and our president’s proclamation of war against terrorism. On the day I left last August, 18 people were killed by a suicide bomber in a Sbarro Restaurant in West Jerusalem that I walked by a dozen times in the previous five days. Yet, the events of the past week have demonstrated how hollow and insubstantial the Bush Doctrine really is, and the terrible consequences of it being so.

What is terrorism? The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) was unable to define it during their three-day meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia this week. Neglecting, for the moment, most Arab nations’ cowardly reluctance to condemn the suicide bombers, it is nonetheless easy to understand why the OIC felt little pressing need to give a definition to terror. If the Bush Administration, which declared the war against terrorism, has failed miserably to provide a definition for its war, why should anyone else step up to bat? This is, the Arab nations rightly implied, the United States’ responsibility.

The Bush Administration came into office with the motto, “Hey, we’re not all that smart, but we’ll give it to you straight.” So far, their Middle East policy is so twisted it makes me dizzy.

Bush has alternately condemned Sharon, and then Arafat, defended Sharon, and now Arafat. The administration has next-to-no policy on what constitutes terrorism in the Middle East, hence each side is defining it for their own ends. The OIC isn’t sure what terrorism is, but it isn’t suicide bombing. The Fatah are terrorists to Sharon, and so is the Palestinian Authority. The fact is, we have given both Sharon and Arafat, as well as our major aid recipients in the Middle East (notably, Mubarak) enough rope to hang themselves with. They have, most obligingly, begun to do so.

Secretary of State Colin Powell’s trip to Israel today is a hopeful sign that the Bush administration has realized its responsibility in the conflict. However, Bush must also give Powell this message to take with him: We oppose terrorism in all its forms, but we also understand that we cannot only attack the military and political organizations that support terrorism. Especially in places like Palestine, terrorism can only be stemmed by a humanitarian battle. In the same way that we continue to fight terrorism in Afghanistan by providing aid and political support to the nascent Afghan nation, Israel must fight terrorism by becoming a true partner in the peace process, removing settlers from the occupied areas and allowing Palestinian civilians to function in a free state.

We can be very clear about what terrorism is while prosecuting it with the carrot as well as the stick. This more nuanced understanding of the roots of terrorism would win more support for military attacks on terrorists.

I look up at a picture of my friend and myself in front of the Western Wall, with the golden Dome of the Rock peaking out like a rising sun overhead. I wish for the pictures simplicity and truth amidst swirling clouds of misinformation and the vaporous stench of rhetoric.

Meredith B. Osborn ’02 is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. Her column appears on alternate Fridays.