The Bush Two Step

Published on Thursday, July 5, 2007 by the Toronto Star

Bush Duplicity Hinders Battle Against Extremism

by Haroon Siddiqui

So, it is the terrorist Hamas that gets the kidnapped BBC correspondent Alan Johnston released. That’s just one of many ironies of the American-Israeli - and Canadian - approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

George W. Bush “invested the heart of my presidency” to bring democracy to the Middle East. Yet he rejected the result of the Palestinian election won by Hamas, and browbeat the allies into starving the Palestinian people.

The West has swung its support for Mahmoud Abbas now that he has replaced the Hamas government with a handpicked prime minister. As Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, suggests, the West has helped impose one-party rule on the Palestinian body politic.

Hamas is a terrorist organization because it uses violence. Yet in the last 18 months, the U.S. and its allies have helped Abbas’s security forces use violence and goon tactics to create anarchy and undermine Hamas.

Since taking over Gaza June 15, Hamas has restored order, banning even the firing of celebratory gunfire, that revolting Arab custom. And it has secured Johnston’s release from a clan close to Abbas’s security chief.

Similarly, America’s other allies across the Middle East - in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc. - continue their authoritarian rule. Yet Bush singles out Iran and Syria as oppressor states. He said last week that the Iranian and Syrian peoples “yearn for freedom and liberty” and wish to “say what they think (and) travel where they wish.” So do the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis and, of course, the Palestinians. But there’s nary a mention of them.

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, who succeeded his father, Hafez, recently won a presidential election in which he was the only candidate. In Egypt, too, the path is being paved for Hosni Mubarak’s son, Gamal, to assume the presidency.

Ayman Nour, the most likely challenger to Gamal, rots in jail on trumped-up charges. When Bush recently issued the obligatory call for his release, Cairo mocked him by reminding him of Guantanamo Bay. Full Story