Outside View: Bush's ideological war

WASHINGTON, April 21 (UPI) -- Commentators seem to have missed one point from U.S. President Bush's recent major speech on Iraq. He identified two enemies that America is fighting in Iraq -- al-Qaida with its ideology of terror, and Iran, the bulwark of Islamic fundamentalism.

Let's note that both enemies are ideological. For Bush, the Iraq war is a major front in the new battle against the evil after the U.S. victory in the Cold War. He believes that in upholding values of freedom in the 21st century, America is leading the battle against a hostile and dangerous ideology.

Just before the start of the war in the spring of 2003, Bush said that the main threat faced by America emanated from Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction (which have never been found).

But in reality, Washington's plan was not at all limited to overthrowing the Iraqi dictator. Bush announced that his goal was to build a "democratic" Iraq that would be a model for other Middle Eastern countries and an American ally in the war on terrorism. Five years later the United States continues to fight a war it seems no nearer to winning, and Iraq is by no means a functioning democracy. It is not quite clear who controls that country, if anyone does, and what will happen to it in the future.

Now Bush has pointed to a new threat. He is worried that Iraq's Shiite population, and later on the whole of the country, may find itself under Iran's control. He has essentially offered the Iranian leadership an ultimatum: "The regime in Tehran also has a choice to make. It can live in peace with its neighbor, enjoy strong economic and cultural and religious ties. Or it can continue to arm, train and fund militant groups, which are terrorizing the Iraqi people and turning them against Iran." He added: "If Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests and our troops and our Iraqi partners."

Bush considers no less important the ideological struggle between "freedom" and "terror." He has once again drawn his favorite parallel between the war against terror and the Cold War, and attempted to justify the vast expense of the Iraq war by comparing it with the defense budget during the ideological and military confrontation with the Soviet Union.

Having mentioned that in certain years of the Cold War this budget reached 13 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, he said: "Our citizens recognized that the imperative of stopping Soviet expansion justified this expense. Today, we face an enemy that is not only expansionist in its aims but has actually attacked our homeland, and intends to do so again. Yet our defense budget accounts for just over 4 percent of our economy, less than our commitment at any point during the four decades of the Cold War."

The president addressed the costs of the war for a reason. Most experts do not believe that the war in Iraq is the cause of the current slump in the U.S. economy, but ordinary Americans are coming to associate it with the growing financial difficulties at home and the danger of recession.

Reports about increasing spending on the Iraq war against the background of a deepening financial crisis only fuel such suspicions. In his recently published book "The Three Trillion Dollar War," Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner in economics, and his co-author, Linda Bilmes, wrote that every 10 days of the Iraqi war cost America $5 billion.

Despite huge financial costs, human losses, the nation's discontent with the war and the risk of becoming America's least popular president, Bush refuses to give up: "Iraq is the convergence point for two of the greatest threats to America in this new century: al-Qaida and Iran," he said.

The president dogmatically believes that victory is possible if America is as tough as it was during the Cold War. Like many of his compatriots, Bush adamantly rejects the view that it was the domestic changes in the Soviet Union rather than U.S. military might and tough policy that ended the Cold War.

Paradoxically, it seems that Bush and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speak a very similar language, though they are on opposing sides of the new ideological barricades that have replaced the Iron Curtain.

Bush continues to rely on force, thereby multiplying the army of terrorists more quickly than he can suppress them and convincing Iran that possession of nuclear weapons is the only guarantee of its security. If John McCain becomes the next president, the United States and the Middle East may be unable to break this vicious circle.

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(Galina Zeveleva is a Washington analyst for RIA Novosti, which previously published a version of this article, but the views in it are the author's alone.)

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(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)