Failure of American foreign policy and the diminishing imperial influence

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Local and international pressures are mounting on the US administration regarding the occupation of Iraq and what the American forces are facing there. In a conspicuous development 79 US Senators voted in favor of a resolution filed by Republican majority leader, Bill Frist, along with the chairman of the Senate committee on armed forces, John Warner, stating that the US administration must start handing over responsibilities to the American-trained Iraqi forces, and to prepare itself to redeploy US troops in that country by next year. Only 19 senators voted against the resolution, however, it served as a clear indication of the increasing dissatisfaction and resentment amongst Republicans (party of the US president, George W. Bush) with the Bush administration's mismanagement of the Iraqi file and the increasing number in casualties among US troops there.

This comes as the Democrats launched a concentrated campaign accusing Bush of fabricating intelligence information on the so-called Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) to justify invasion of Iraq.

John Kerry, who ran for office in the last US presidential elections, considered the war on Iraq as "one of the worst mistakes of the US foreign policy in history", charging the White House of "hypocrisy and ineligibility" and adding that history will judge and condemn the present administration for deceiving the country in justifying the war on Iraq.

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary, tried to refute his critics' allegations, saying "critics of the war want to rewrite history". He charged that the US Congress in 1998 ratified the "Iraq liberation act", which delineated the US policy in ousting Iraq's strong man Saddam Hussein from power and spreading democracy there, and was subsequently signed by Bill Clinton, the then US Democrat president.

However, the Democrats, swiftly rebounded Rumsfeld ball of accusations, saying "intelligence information presented at that time was totally different from information presented by the Bush administration", accusing Bush of attempting to persuade the American citizens of an alleged link between the Qaeda and the deposed Iraqi regime despite continuous rejection by concerned US intelligence apparatuses.

American goals:

Everybody realized that ascending of the so-called "new conservatives" to power in the United States, and the events of 11th of September of 2001 in New York city had turned the whole world into a circle of global conflict between the US and what the new conservatives liked to name as "terrorism".

The world stood puzzled before this conflict, which Washington insisted on its continuity and opted to make it as a bridge to spread its global dominance to achieve its interests in the world amidst total absence of global balance of power after the collapse of the Communist bloc. Terrorism became the US charge against any individual, party, or country that thought of freeing itself from the US fist or refusing to bow to its will.

Under this fabricated slogan "war on terrorism", Washington moved to impose its foreign policy, which was formulated by its new conservative rulers so as to achieve the following objectives:

1- Finish off or subjugate any regime that resists Washington's imperial policies based on: "Anyone who is not with us is against us".

2- Dominate oil sources which are of vital importance to the American industry.

3- Open external markets before the American goods and products under different titles and organizations, including World Trade Organization (WTO) and bilateral or group free trade zones, among other titles and organizations.

Those American political moves were accompanied with violence, threats, and pressures that ignored all international protocols, laws, and conventions opening the door for global chaos.

In the year 2002, the US invaded and occupied Afghanistan with the pretext of capturing Bin Laden and getting rid of the Taliban regime, which it labeled as a "terrorist" regime. This was then followed by the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq one year later, however, this time without any authority from the international community, using the pretext of alleged links between Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein's regime, and its possession of the proven-to-be-false WMD allegations.

Later, Iran and North Korea, the remaining two axes of the Bush-invented "axes of evil", came under US threats, accusing them of nuclear aspirations.

At the moment, the US along with France, pushed by Israeli instigations, are working against Syria, adjusting the international mode to impose sanctions on it due to its steadfastness and rejection to bow to American pressures or market its political agenda and ventures in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine in order to break resistance in those three countries against American and Israeli occupations.

This fact became clear with the American-France sponsored UNSC resolution number 1636 that was oppressively issued based on politically- motivated report by the international investigator, Detlev Melhis, and his committee probing death of the latest Lebanese premier Rafeek Al-Hariri.

The resolution paved the way before international "disciplinary" actions against Syria; including use of force, if it didn’t cooperate with the committee so as to pressure it to bow to the American conditions.

The bitter harvest:

The American military and political moves are currently at their peak in the Arab and Muslim regions to complete what the new conservatives in the White House had planned. However, the end result is what counts.

It is true that Washington had indeed occupied both Iraq and Afghanistan, and might even occupy other countries, but what is even more true is that it had totally failed in controlling those countries or subjugating their peoples. It had lost the compass of events in the battle and paid a painfully high price in terms of human and financial losses in those two occupied Muslim countries.

In Afghanistan, they failed, till now, to capture Osama Bin Laden, the number one wanted man on the American list despite the huge reward allocated for his capture (50 million dollars). Its troops along with the ISAF troops were losing control of the country as they confined themselves to the capital, Kabul, and were suffering daily human and material losses for their illegal occupation as evident by the latest shooting of two US officials in the US embassy in Kabul, in addition to the recent noticeable change in quality and quantity of the Afghani resistance's assaults.

On the Iraqi level, future of the American troops appears to be even darker and unknown as they were deeply drowning in the Iraqi marsh with daily numbers of American casualties that might derail, if not end, the American global supremacy if of the Iraqi resistance remained with the same intensity.

They have lost so far 2,071 soldiers and officers, while 16,000 others were wounded 7,800 of them critical, according to US statistics. 39% of soldiers returning from Iraq are suffering psychological problems according to US military medical sources. The US center for political studies reported on 31 August 2005 that morale was very low amongst soldiers serving in Iraq especially after all leave was cancelled.

The war in Iraq and Afghanistan had cost the American budget around $ 300 billion, the bulk of which was spent in Iraq, entailing a deficit in the US budget estimated at $ 521 billion in 2004.

All those factors had greatly contributed in shaking the American public confidence in their ruling leaders and their foreign and local policies as well, leading to increased numbers of protests against the war and escalated calls to bring the troops back home.

Surveys recently conducted by some American news agencies and institutions, including the ABC, CNN, and USA newspaper among other institutions reflected a soaring rate of anti-war opinions and calls for immediate withdrawal among American citizens who fear repetition of the Vietnam's catastrophe and nightmare.

Furthermore, accelerated developments in Iraq prompted a number of American officials and experts to evaluate the situation there. Dr. Steven Metz of the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College connected the fate of the United States supremacy to success or failure in Iraq:

“The stakes in Iraq are immense. The conflict there will help determine whether the world continues its difficult and uneven movement toward a global system based on open governments and economies or fractures into a new bipolarity. The Arab world is the region most resistant to the U.S. vision of open economies and governments. If it can work there, it can work anywhere. Iraq is the beachhead, the test case, the laboratory.”

Ivan Eland, Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty in Oakland, California, affirmed that guerilla warfare usually end with big loss to regular armies, opining that the US troops in Iraq have lost direction as evident in the daily losses inflicted on them. He stressed that the American troops could not even secure the road leading to the Baghdad international airport, and failed to ensure safety of American servicemen even inside their barracks, not to mention securing a vast country such as Iraq.

For his part, US Senator John Murtha, who once served in the US Marines, chided the war, saying that the war on Iraq will diminish the US ability to face possible local threats.

All of the above statements and criticism of the war reflect seriousness of the American crisis that started with the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. So what would happen to the US and its exhausted troops in Iraq if it really thought of engaging in another uncalculated adventure in a region where the US is fully unaware of its history and nature of its peoples?

On the nuclear levels, Washington was totally aware that North Korea wasn’t alone on the arena, but was indeed backed by Asian giant, China, making the issue associated with political interests of those political rivals in the international arena which meant that Washington had to negotiate making concessions, if negotiations succeeded in the first place.

The issue on the Iranian level, nonetheless, was even thornier due to certain force factors Iran possesses, viz:

1-The use of oil as a weapon that could paralyze the international oil market and increase its prices in case Iran decided to stop supplies, which will ultimately lead to sharp crisis to European and American industries.

2- Its possession of strategic missiles capable of reaching Israel and the heart of Europe, and the possibility its huge army might inflict big losses on the exhausted US army in Iraq in case war erupted with the US.

3- Big economic interests of superpowers like Russia, China, and the European troika with Tehran, making Washington's chances of opening an all out war with unpredictable results against Iran very slim.

In addition to that, the American foreign policy received a number of shocks in different parts of the world. It received a big blow when Uzbekistan, its ally in the war on Afghanistan, induced by Russia and China, had asked it last July to close its airbase in the Karchi Khan Abad area, which it really did and completed this month.

Another big slap to its foreign policy was evident when tens of thousands of Argentineans received Bush with anti-America placards and demonstrations during the American countries summit, which aimed at marketing the US project to establish a free trade zone in the region, in addition to sharp criticism of the Venezuelan firebrand leader, Hugo Chavez.

Thus, the US is experiencing a great failure of its foreign policy, and is reaping bitter defeats on many levels. It is unable to impose its political agenda on the Arab people, especially in Iraq, that turned into a resistance and attrition arena for the US which is being led by a bunch of new conservatives driven by their greed, oil aspirations, and weakness of Arab regimes.

Even Washington's dream of controlling the Iraqi oil fields and securing supplies to its factories had tuned into a curse on it as it along with its war allies failed to date in securing oil pipelines from daily bombing by the Iraqi resistance that negatively affected the world markets' supplies and led to a hike in oil prices that reached 60 dollars a barrel, forcing it to use its reserves to cover its local needs.

The United States, to be objective, had succeeded some how in certain files, including changing regimes in Ukraine and Georgia, courting Pakistan to its side, dominating some Arab regimes, occupying two Muslim countries Iraq and Afghanistan, and was able to instigate the world against Syria and Iran, but failed to gain the battle and end it favorably so far.

Iraqi resistance alone was able to derail the US imperial expansion in the Arab region and could signal the start of the shrinking of American dominance in the region because the battle has turned into a real battle between the US on the one hand, and the anti-US Arab peoples on the other hand, however, this time in a form that was never expected by American decision-makers in the White House.