Arab press outlets reacted with caution and suspicion yesterday to President Bush’s new blueprint for victory in Iraq, saying the president’s ambitious words still must confront the messy realities on the ground in Iraq.
Several editorials expressed disappointment that Mr. Bush had not laid out a hard timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, while others argued that the president’s strong words of support for the new Iraqi government and its forces were meant to cover a hasty U.S. retreat.
“That there will be no Iraq pullout without victory is a story that not even children would believe,” wrote the Jordanian newspaper Al-Rai. “Washington itself realizes that ’victory’ is impossible.”
Tariq al-Juburi, writing in the Baghdad paper Al-Mada, said Mr. Bush’s pledges of economic, political and security backing for the Iraq government put added pressure on the United States to deliver for long-suffering ordinary Iraqis.
The Iraqi citizen “wants actions not words, translated into reality on the ground — into projects, job opportunities and prosperity,” he said.
Ambassador James Jeffrey, the lead State Department coordinator on Iraq policy, told an audience at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy yesterday that U.S. officials know they face heavy doubts from Iraq’s neighbors, particularly states with Sunni Arab majorities.
Mr. Bush and other U.S. officials say the bulk of the Iraq insurgency arises from Iraq’s Sunni minority, which dominated the country under dictator Saddam Hussein.
Although an Arab League summit in Cairo endorsed a “right of resistance” against U.S. and allied forces in Iraq, Mr. Jeffrey said the Arab leaders also condemned terrorist attacks on civilians, backed better training for Iraq’s security forces and offered diplomatic and economic support to Baghdad.
“Much of our diplomacy work in the next few months will focus on seeing that those commitments are carried out,” Mr. Jeffrey said.
Several Arab news outlets said Mr. Bush’s Wednesday speech puts more pressure on the government in Baghdad to step up their own efforts against the insurgents.
“The Iraqi parties should put their desire to seek reconciliation into practice and realize that the organization of the Iraqi house is an Iraqi task from the very beginning to the very end,” according to the Saudi newspaper Al-Jazirah.
But many Arab commentators took a much dimmer view of U.S. intentions.
The United Arab Emirates’ Al Khaleej said in an editorial that Mr. Bush’s promise to pull American troops out of Iraq as the country stabilizes rang hollow, insisting that “neoconservatives” in the U.S. government would never allow a complete withdrawal.
“It is not easy to abandon their plan for the ’greater Middle East’ and their dreams of controlling the world,” the paper said.
The London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi said Mr. Bush’s victory strategy amounted to an admission of failure for the U.S.-led invasion.
“President Bush will face serious difficulties in fulfilling his promises to achieve victory in Iraq because his war was immoral, unjustified and based on lies,” the paper wrote. “History has shown that all past occupations ended up as failures.”
Jeffrey White, a defense analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and co-author of an upcoming study of the Iraqi insurgency, said the next six to nine months after the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections will prove a “tipping point” for the U.S. mission in Iraq.
He said the various insurgent and Islamist groups fighting U.S. and Iraqi forces are well-funded and adaptable and are able to count on substantial popular support in Iraq’s Sunni-dominated regions.
But he said the insurgents and terrorists have not been able to derail Iraq’s political evolution or to spark a general civil war among the country’s ethnic and religious groups.
The insurgency “is formidable but not unbeatable,” he said. “I think this war remains winnable, provided the political process stays on track and the U.S. government does not withdraw its forces prematurely.”
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