Thursday, May 06, 2004

I watched the film "The Four Feathers" last night, about the British incursion into the Sudan in the late 19th century, and you could sub the Americans for the British and nthe Iraqis for the Sudanese and you wouldn'tm miss a beat - we're just another sanctimonious would-be imperialist on a crusade to bring our way of life and values to cultures that have no interest in them - or certainly not in having us impose them on them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From liberator to oppressor MANY ARABS VIEW THE U.S. DIFFERENTLY NOW; DONALD RUMSFELD SHOULD RESIGN By Daniel Sneider The Bush administration is desperately trying to contain the scandal over American guards who abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. But it is already too late for damage control. The nauseating image of an American woman guard, posing with a cigarette dangling from her mouth while pointing at the genitals of a naked and hooded prisoner, is already burned forever into the minds of millions of Iraqis and fellow Arabs. No matter what happens now in Iraq, we've lost the war for Arab hearts and minds. Certainly what the American guards did pales in comparison to the torture, brutality and murder practiced by the Saddam Hussein regime in that same prison. We can take some comfort in our willingness to investigate ourselves. But images from Abu Ghraib prison have blurred the crucial moral difference between the United States and the horrific regime it overthrew. For many Arabs, the United States has quickly descended from liberator of Iraq, beyond occupier, to an oppressor -- arrogant and disdainful of those it rules. Just listen to Abdel Basset Turki, who resigned as human rights minister in the government set up by Ambassador Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority. ``In November, I talked to Mr. Bremer about human rights violations in general and in jails in particular,'' he said. Turki told Bremer about meetings with former detainees and the harsh treatment they had received. ``He listened but there was no answer . . . He didn't take care about the information I gave him.'' The investigation into how far up the chain of command the responsibility for these acts goes has only begun. But it is not too soon to demand that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resign for what has happened on his watch. The perpetrators of these abuses ``have done more damage to the United States than most traitors have done by revealing state secrets,'' says the Hoover Institution's Larry Diamond, who just returned from Baghdad where he was a senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority on the political transition. Diamond is among a growing number of experts who support the war, yet are now deeply pessimistic. For them, the Abu Ghraib affair is only the latest in a series of setbacks. In the last few weeks, the coalition authority was forced to back off from bellicose threats to destroy Sunni fighters in Al-Fallujah and radical Shiite militias in An-Najaf for fear it would trigger a broader insurgency. Instead it is relying on tribal leaders, moderate Shiite clerics and former Baathist military officers to create order. While the correction in American policy was inevitable, it was also fateful and consequential. ``It may not be apparent in the U.S. as it is in the Arab world, but several weeks of travel in the region indicate that the course of the fighting in Fallujah and Najaf is being perceived in much of Iraq and the Arab world as a serious U.S. defeat,'' Anthony Cordesman, a widely respected specialist on the Iraq conflict, wrote this week. The Bush administration had already reversed its course by embracing United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi's plan to form a new interim government after June 30 and oversee elections by Jan. 31 of next year. Cordesman worries however that the combination of the loss of American legitimacy and the appearance of weakness will embolden radicals who are eager to seize power. ``At this point, the U.S. lacks good options other than to turn as much of the political, aid and security effort over to moderate Iraqis as soon as possible,'' he wrote, ``and pray that the U.N. can create some kind of climate for political legitimacy.'' The administration still plans to use the military, now bolstered by an additional 20,000 troops, to keep control over Iraq. But that belief, too, will crash up against Iraqi reality, suggests Graham Fuller, a longtime former CIA analyst of the region. ``I can't see any Iraqi leader signing on to an American contingent there without destroying his own credibility as a nationalist,'' Fuller told me. ``The only thing they can hope for is to get out without too much humiliation,'' he said. ``It will be a victory for the radicals.'' Listening to the rosy talk that still bubbles out of the White House, I wonder whether a much-needed dose of reality will ever reach those who send our men and women to war. DANIEL SNEIDER is foreign affairs columnist for the Mercury News. His column appears on Sunday and Thursday. You can contact him at dsneider@mercurynews.com

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