WAR IN IRAQ AFTER THE CONFLICT: Washington victory will be Pyrrhic, Syrian professor argues By Kim Ghattas
The US will win the war in Iraq but in terms of its consequences for the Arab world it may have already lost the peace, argues Sadeq el Azm, a well-known Syrian intellectual.
Sitting in his book-lined study in Damascus, Mr Azm asserts: "The American military victory in Iraq is going to be Pyrrhic." The more difficult it proves for the US to govern postwar Iraq, he says, the more secure other regimes in the region will feel in resisting pressures for democratic reform.
Mr Azm, one of the few openly critical voices in Syria, says that if the war had been swift, coupled with a positive outcome for the Iraqis, it could have influenced neighbouring countries for the good.
But with the conflict in its third week and with television pictures of civilian casualties being beamed into homes across the Arab world, the momentum for potential democratic change in the region has been lost as the negative aspects have been seized upon by Arab regimes.
"It's already too late, in a political sense, the US has lost the war. The war in Iraq will actually hinder reforms in the Arab world," says Mr Azm.
The more the Americans talk about the need for democracy and reforms in the Arab world, he says, the more they undermine grassroot efforts to bring about such changes.
Any call for reforms in an Arab country will now look inspired and supported by the west, an offence in the eyes of many Arab governments.
This Syrian philosophy professor, who has given lectures around the world, is the author of many books, some of which - such as The Critique of Religious of Thought, published in 1968 - have been banned in the reg-ion.
He has also written extensively about the Arab-Israeli conflict, including The View from Damascus, an article published in June 2000 in the New York Review of Books which argued that Syria was ready for peace with Israel.
Mr Azm says the US spent too much time predicting a swift war that would encounter no resistance, a new kind of war that no one had ever seen.
"When the war started, if the Iraqis shot down one plane or destroyed two tanks, it was seen as a huge victory in the Arab world," he explains. Even if the outcome of the war is certain, the developments on the ground have given a boost to anti-US feelings in the region.
"Initially, the widespread feeling was that no one would shed a tear over Saddam Hussein, but when the US got bogged down in the south, there was more and more a feeling that for Arab morale, it was better for Iraq to lose after a lot of resistance, that it's better than a walkover," he says.
This was not Washington's only mistake, Mr Azm says. "This US administration's attempt to impose its will in a confrontational way on all issues, from Afghanistan, to Palestine, Iraq and even Turkey, all at the same time, is an absurdity that has now been exposed," he says, adding he had expected the US to first de-escalate the violence between Israelis and Palestinians.
"What Mr Bush is doing goes contrary to everything we have studied and read about how policy is made, you don't open all fronts at the same time."
Mr Azm also says he is disappointed by the religious-laden rhetoric used by the Bush administration, which he says is undermining efforts in the region to defuse conflicts, whether the Israeli-Palestinian dispute or the war on terrorism, to protect and promote co-existence between Muslims and the Christian minority.
"When Iran, for example, calls the US the great Satan, well, that's Iran, but when the world's top superpower starts to use phrases like axis of evil, it's not funny," he says.
"The Bush administration almost looks like a parody of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban," dividing the world - like the al-Qaeda leader - into two poles of good and bad.
"The best result of this war would be for George W. Bush to get rid of Saddam Hussein and then lose the elections."