President Bush has requested an additional 87 billion dollars to help stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan. The funds -- equivalent to about one fifth of the U.S. 2004 defense budget -- would support military deployment and reconstruction efforts. The president made the appeal to the nation in his first public address since he declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq last May. He spoke amid growing criticism that he has failed to devise an effective post-war plan for Iraq.
Clifford May is President of the , a Washington-based research institute focusing on terrorism. He says what is happening in Iraq historically occurs when a regime is overthrown: ?People look at what is happening in Iraq right now, just a few months after toppling Saddam, and they see terrorists at work. They see confusion. They see insufficient services. All of that was true in Germany post World War II. The Marshall Plan came after two years of chaos following Hitler's demise. The same thing happened in the American south after the civil war. Terrorists like the Klu Klux Klan rose up and terrorized the countryside. They objected to the occupation by the North. They tried everything to make sure that the occupation would fail.?
Mr. May believes it is unreasonable to think the United States could topple a dictator and rebuild an oppressed society in such a short time. He says the American public and the world must be patient: ?We are doing things that have not been done before. We may fail, but we hope to succeed. But the idea that we would succeed in a matter of weeks or just before the end of the summer, I think that is a ridiculous idea.?
Georgie Anne Geyer, a veteran columnist on international affairs and author of eight books, says it is not a matter of patience, but of planning. She believes the Bush administration rushed into war without thinking it through: ?Once they had taken Iraq, there was no plan for the day after. There were no military police that should have been brought in after. There was no reconstruction plan.?
In his speech to the American people, President Bush said Iraq is now the 'central front' in the war on terrorism.
But Ms. Geyer says the initial U.S. attack had little to do with the larger war on terrorism. She says the administration's claim in the run up to the war that Saddam Hussein's secular Baathist party had connections to the terrorist network al-Qaida turned out to be false:
?From everything we know, there was no connection. What is now happening with the war, by going into Iraq, we have opened this Baathist secular country to al-Qaida. From all accounts, a lot of al-Qaida people are coming in. These terrible bombings of the Jordanian embassy, the United Nations, the Shia shrine in Najaf, which is like the Islamic shine in Mecca, all of these have the touch of al-Qaida.?
Columnist Geyer says, in essence, the U.S. attack and occupation have bred more resentment in the Middle East and attracted international terrorists into beleaguered Iraq. No Arab state, including countries where U.S. troops prepared for the invasion, publicly supported the military campaign against Iraq.
But Clifford May says U.S. action in Iraq was necessary, and although groups like the Baathists and al-Qaida may have their differences, they share a common enemy in western nations. He says the terrorist attacks taking place around the world, including those in Iraq, are carried out by numerous groups with one goal: to unite the Muslim world to defeat the West:
?We say we are fighting a war against terrorism, but terrorism is really only a method. In a way, that's like saying we're fighting a war against nuclear weapons or against biological weapons. Terrorism is being used by whom? That's the key question. And it's being used by various ideologies. These ideologies justify terrorism when it's used against the infidels - which mean Jews, Christians, Hindus, moderate Muslims and Buddhists. Think of those attacks that have taken place recently - in Bombay, in Baghdad, in Kashmir, in Jerusalem, in Tunisia and in Bali. These are all committed by those who have themselves declared that they are fighting a jihad for Islam.?
Mr. May says the United States is offering democracy to the Middle East as a way to escape this radical movement: ?I think people in the West, Democrats and Republicans here, are saying to the Islamic world that our hope for you is that we welcome you into the free world. But these jihadist movements, which claim to act in the name of Islam, are a perversion of Islam. They are anti-democratic. They find their roots not only in Islam, but in fascism.?