inside the glass house

The oppressed do not trust their liberator
NEW YORK - After its aggressive push to advance its political cause by military means, the US is apparently flirting with the concept of public diplomacy to resolve some of the world's most intractable problems-- not excluding Iraq.

When the soon-to-be-appointed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was grilled by senators at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, she repeatedly said "the time for diplomacy is now."

If the US is now opting for diplomacy over military might, one comedian joked: "we must be really running out of ammunition." Rice defended the administration's Iraq policy on the ground that it was based on a "strategic" decision to remove Iraqi president Saddam Hussein because he was a danger to the rest of the world -- never mind his weapons of mass destruction which the US never found.

Despite the monumental disaster in Iraq, the Bush administration still refuses to admit that the ongoing military misadventure is one of its biggest political blunders. And at what cost?

The US stands with "oppressed people" on every continent, Rice said, peddling her administration's flawed policy, but the more important question is: how many of the world's "oppressed people" are willing to stand by the US?

The spreading insurgency in Iraq is not showing any signs of winding down, with both sides taking heavy casualties. The insurgents have even infiltrated the ranks of the American-trained security force and police.

The US military has reached a point where it is unable to trust a single individual among the "oppressed people" it is trying to liberate. If it cannot rely on US-trained Iraqi soldiers armed with American weapons, whom can it trust?

The average Iraqi has clearly been alienated as civilian casualties keep mounting. In a letter to the New York Times last week, one reader blasted the Bush administration for its half-truths and prevarications on the Iraq war. The killing of civilians -- the so-called "collateral damage" in military jargon -- is unforgivable, he said.

While page one of the newspaper ran Rice's testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee last week, the inside page had a harrowing picture of a small child with blood-stained face and hands, screaming because her parents had just been killed by US troops when their car failed to stop at a military checkpoint.

"I stared at this little girl's picture for a long time and wondered how Ms Rice might explain to her, someday, why she had been forced to live a life without a mother or a father because of a 'strategic' decision (by the US government) to topple Saddam Hussein,'' the letter said.

"As an American for whom this war violates every principle I believe once made our nation great, I was overcome with a deep and unremitting sense of shame,'' he wrote, as more and more Americans are appalled by the continuing war, with US soldiers returning home in body bags.

The Bush administration, which has no exit strategy out of Iraq, keeps repeating the mantra that US forces will pull out no sooner Iraqi troops are ready to take over. But this could take decades judging by the painfully slow build-up of the new Iraqi army and police -- not to mention the large-scale defections.

At the Senate hearing, a ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee Joe Biden challenged Rice who claimed the US military has already trained about 120,000 Iraqi troops, which was obviously a half-truth.

Based on confidential discussions with US military commanders during his recent visit to Iraq, Biden said he had come to the conclusion that so far only 4,000 Iraqi troops have been "effectively trained."

"You all don't do anything except parrot," Biden said, "We've trained 120,000 forces? So I go home (to my constituency) and people ask me: why are we still there (in Iraq)?" A legtimate question for which Rice had no answer.

Rice hinted that there may be more misadventures on the cards. She identified six "outposts of tyranny": Burma (Myanmar), Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Belarus and Zimbabwe. If the Bush administration has its way, these are all countries ripe for "regime change".

Perhaps the only consolation is that the Bush administration may have second thoughts about military invasions after being badly bloodied in Iraq. As President Bush was sworn in for his second four-year-term last week, there was still little or no hope for a "softer, gentler" United States in the world of global politics.

When the much-maligned Richard Nixon was running for a second term as president (at a time when his critics thought he should be behind bars), a bumper sticker supportive of Nixon read: "Four More Years". And one of his critics added: "And two off for good behaviour."

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