Zogby: Iraq war a mistake on many levels

WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- The United States is basing its Iraq policy on a set of mistaken assumptions, says James Zogby, head of the Arab American Institute in Washington.

UPI Chief News Analyst Martin Sieff interviewed Zogby, a prominent and respected leader of the Arab-American community, about his criticisms of the administration's war policy toward Iraq, the possible negative consequences of war and the intellectual assumptions on which the policy is based.

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UPI: Why do you believe that President Bush has failed to make an effective case for going to war with Iraq?

Zogby: I have argued from the outset that President Bush has not made a case for this war. He and Secretary of State Colin Powell have made the case that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is evil but not why this would make a case for a unilateral and pre-emptive American war.

The president has not talked about the costs of this war and he has offered different rationales for it to different audiences. To the American people, this war has been presented as part of our compassionate and divinely ordained mission to free people. To the United Nations, it has been sold as a war to disarm Saddam.

Also, the president has not told the American people what the human and economic costs of the war may be, or the long-term burdens and consequences that may flow from it.

UPI: You have made clear that you do not share the optimistic assessments of the civilian war planners in the Pentagon and their supporters in the media that this will be a quick, effective war with many positive strategic benefits for the United States coming out of it. What is your criticism of these assumptions?

Zogby: The neoconservative infantile fantasy that the war will last only mere days, that evil will be defeated and that democracy will reign supreme and American influence spread happily throughout the Middle East, is a dangerous notion. I find no empirical evidence to support it. It comes from people who do not know the region and most of whom have never served in the region. But those who have served in the Middle East -- senior diplomats and military officials especially -- paint a very different picture. They warn that this war could very easily -- indeed very probably -- lead to internalized anger and resentment against the United States, regional instability, increased international terrorism, especially against Americans and a greater threat to our traditional allies. Far from bringing democracy to the Middle East, the consequences of a U.S. war with Iraq are likely to destroy and delay the real islands of democracy and prospects for it that already exist there. Governments traditionally friendly to the United States will likely have to resort far more to repression of popular opinion.

Therefore this war looks likely to generate more repression and less democracy in the region rather than the other way around. (Zogby said neoconservatives are those who are conservative on defense but not necessarily on social issues, many of them former Democrats who joined GOP conservative ranks at the time of the Reagan administration).

UPI: What then is the justification for this war?

Zogby: It appears at times that the president and his team have an obsession about Iraq, and a desire to use this moment and opportunity to achieve neoconservative-driven military and political strategies.

UPI: What do you think the probable consequences even of a rapid U.S. victory will be?

Zogby: I believe the initial military battle will probably be very quick but the consequences of even a quick victory will be with us for a long time. We have the superior might but we do not understand Iraq and we do not understand the likely long-term consequences of our involvement there. This has all the makings of a war without end. My best sense is that the al-Qaida terrorist organization is neither a disciplined nor highly organized military force. It is a network of varying degrees of cohesion and competence among its composite groups and supporters. But all of them have a fanatic anti-U.S. agenda. This war will only fuel their anger and increase their ability to recruit new groups into their network. It will also increase the likelihood that groups not already in their network will splinter off from previous associations and affiliate with them. Therefore we will see a rise in acts of terrorism that will be nothing more than a continuation of this war.

The danger is that the coalition that we need to work with us to deal with al-Qaida will be weakened. Some of the nations that have worked with us in this coalition may withdraw from it or be weakened in their commitment to it.

It is likely that our allies in the region, feeling the pressure from their population, will become more repressive and not less. It is much less likely that as a consequence of this war, civil society will flourish and democracy will bloom!

Therefore the dangers of what has been termed "Blowback" -- the destabilization of our allies in the region even if the war rapidly proves successful -- is a very real concern. Very much so.

UPI: What then do you anticipate will be the diplomatic, strategic and security fall-out from this war at home and abroad?

Zogby: Our allies will be weakened. Our standing will be reduced. And our own dangers at home will be heightened. This is not a war that will solve problems. This is going to be a war that will create new problems, In the short term -- the next 6 to 12 months -- there will also probably be a sharp spike in the international oil price as a consequence of this war -- enough to cause serious domestic hardship within the United States and undermine hopes of an economic recovery.

UPI: Do you believe that the onset of war will increase anti-Arab prejudice within the United States?

Zogby: We are already seeing a spike in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice. This happened before on a number of occasions: during the Iran hostage crisis, during the first Gulf War, and after the Oklahoma City bombing, and right after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In each instance, the number of hate crimes against Arab and Muslim Americans went up rapidly.

I fear there will again be an increase in such incidents, especially related to the instances of Arab-Americans speaking out against the war.

UPI: The administration appears determined to go ahead with the war even if it must do so unilaterally and without even Britain as an ally. But supporters of the war argue that the determination to prosecute is essential to maintaining U.S. global leadership and prestige. How do you respond to such arguments?

Zogby: This war has already internationally isolated America. Significant damage has already been done before a shot has been fired. When polls show that people in allied countries believe in equal degree that President George W. Bush poses as much of a threat to world peace as does Saddam Hussein then America has a problem.

It may be that the political vision of the civilians who are currently advising the president is that we exercise unilateral military might to establish unrivalled American hegemony. But I do not think such a policy is sustainable in the long term. We live in an inter-dependent world. You cannot lead if no one is following.

UPI: What do you believe the consequences of the current U.S. policy will be?

Zogby: When I look at the group currently shaping U.S. policy they are literally destroying the relationships that the United States has long enjoyed as the leader of the Free World. They are dismantling the structures of international diplomacy. They are dismembering our democratic foundations and they are doing immeasurable harm to the image and reputation of America around the world.

Leadership means you have moral authority and legitimacy so that people join you to pursue common goals. But we have taken a different course and have surrendered leadership to the Russians, the French and the Germans.

UPI: Do your concerns about the drive towards war extend to the financial planning for it?

Zogby: There is certainly a degree of boldness and recklessness in even the financial preparations for this war. Note the audacity of the administration in presenting a budget for $300 billion deficit and not having the indirect costs of the war factored into it.

Yet we have already spent $50 billion before a bullet has been fired. There will also be a direct cost in paying for the troops, the logistical costs and the long-term costs of rebuilding Iraq.

The indirect costs are what will happen to our economy and to the Middle East and the ripple effects these will have. None of that was factored in to the administration's budget.

UPI: Yet polls seem to show support for the war?

Zogby: I do not think that the administration's argument for war is credible and I greatly doubt it has truly convinced the American public. It is true that polls show a significant majority of American public opinion says, "Let's do this war." But the number drops sharply when you ask follow-up detailed questions that factor in the likely consequences. In a recent poll, 59 percent supported the war but that number fell 18 percent to 41 percent when the same people were asked if they still supported the war if it included any American casualties! And support for the war fell further to only around 30 percent with 60 percent against if we were to go in unilaterally without the approval of the United Nations. The American people do not want this war. They do not want to see a unilateral war.

UPI: Certainly, many traditionally friendly governments in the Middle East appear unenthusiastic about the launching of this war. What do you believe their concerns are?

Zogby: I know that our allies in the region worry the most not only about an immediate American intensified engagement but about an eventual full-scale U.S. withdrawal from the region if the war and its consequences should generate a powerful domestic popular backlash. What happens when the American people come to experience first hand the burdens of this venture and when instability occurs in some of our allies in the region? What will happen when the American people see that it will require an empire-building mission from them in many countries? But if we abandon the enterprise after launching it, we and our allies will experience far more difficulties than if we had never started the whole thing in the first place.

UPI: The current policy certainly seems a revolutionary departure from the more cautious consensual policies pursued by Republican and Democratic administrations alike for the past half century and more. Where do these new policies and assumptions come from?

Zogby: Part of this is the neoconservative ideology. Part of it is playing to the administration's base vote. They have crafted a message about this war that they think will ensure them future electoral victories. They seem to make the point that they don't want international support. They just don't care.

Some of the harm would be mitigated if there were an international coalition as there was in 1991. But I see no good coming from this unilateral approach.

Grave damage has already been done. In many parts of the world our influence has lessened and allies are abandoning us. People are fearful of what appears to be a neo-imperialism and we appear to have done nothing to dissuade them. To the rest of the world we are saying, 'Fall in line or else and we will do it anyway.'

UPI: Where do these new ideas come from?

Zogby: They are a secularized version of Christian fundamentalism. Neoconservatism and Christian fundamentalism have a Manichaean view of the world. Both believe in the inevitability and even desirability of an apocalyptic conflict between good and evil. And both believe that spontaneous good comes when good fights evil. But there is no empirical evidence for this. It is an infantile temper tantrum. They learned all the wrong lessons from Ronald Reagan and the Cold War. Just as Hamas learned the wrong lessons from Hezbollah's victory in driving the Israelis out of South Lebanon.

Hamas concluded that if you kill enough Israelis, they will all go away. In the same way the old Cold Warriors were convinced that their confrontation and hostility alone brought down the Soviet Union. They ignored the roles of the non-violent Solidarity movement in Poland, or of the moral influence of Pope John Paul II or the effect of President Mikhail Gorbachev's own glasnost and perestroika reforms within the Soviet Union itself. And they appear totally unaware and unconcerned about the very different levels of political development in the political evolution of Eastern Europe 20 years ago and the Middle East today.

They also believe that the kind of radical democratic reforms they envisage can be unilaterally imposed on societies from the outside when in fact they can only succeed if they occur from within.

This love of confrontational strategies is based on the notion that spontaneous violence and an apocalyptic conflict can resolve our problems and bring about a far better good in the world.

They have based their understanding on like-minded ideologies who have shown condescending and derogatory assumptions towards Arabs -- racist assumptions that Arabs tend towards evil.

There is also a fundamental disdain for and even rejection of the most fundamental assumptions and philosophy of international diplomacy. Neoconservatives reject the practice of diplomacy. But diplomacy is what you do when you build structures to bridge the gap and mediate the differences between different systems in the world. It is the opposite of the Manichaean and apocalyptic, even childishly simplistic fantasy of seeing the "other" only as an evil to be confronted and annihilated.