 Reuters Photo |
Posted on 05/06/2004 8:45:18 AM PDT by absalom01
CAIRO (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) did too little too late when he told two Arabic-language television stations that he condemned the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, Arab commentators and pundits said on Thursday.
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While the White House portrayed the interviews with al-Hurra and Al Arabiya on Wednesday as a special effort to address Arab public opinion, the commentators said Arabs saw Bush on television often and were unlikely to change their minds about him on the basis of a single appearance.
Some said that Bush was more worried about looking good to Americans in advance of presidential elections in November than in improving relations with the Arab world, which would require painful changes in U.S. policy toward Iraq (news - web sites) and Israel.
U.S. government-financed channel Alhurra, which appears to be little watched in the Arab world, ran its interview with Bush without a translation into Arabic, much reducing the impact.
In the interview with Dubai-based Al Arabiya, which is much more popular, Bush said the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was abhorrent and justice would be done after a full investigation.
But he did not apologize for the abuses or suggest any second thoughts about the policies which Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (news - web sites) says have helped make the United States more hated than ever in the Middle East.
"It's not enough for the American president to punish the troops who committed the odious practices and it's not enough that the national security adviser (Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites)) apologizes," commentator Ghassan Sharbal wrote in the London-based pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat.
Egyptian columnist Ahmed el-Birri wrote in Egypt's al-Ahram:
"It's not enough for Bush to be indignant... What they need to do is take an immediate decision to withdraw their forces from Iraq, confess the terrible injustice they have done to Iraq and apologize in public for what their troops have done.
"In the end we say to them (Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)): 'Enough of your illusions. The time of empires has passed and will never return'."
Bush's reputation in the Arab world had already suffered badly this year from his concessions to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) and Washington's refusal to condemn Israel's assassination of two leaders of the Palestinian group Hamas.
ISRAEL, OIL AND MUSLIMS
When the scandal broke over photographs of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, the pictures reinforced Arab skepticism about Bush's argument that the aim of invading Iraq was to end human rights abuses and bring about a new era of freedom and democracy for Iraqis.
They suspect the motives were to protect Israel, seize control of Iraq's oil, build an American empire in the Middle East or simply to wage war on Muslims.
"American credibility has been hurt and people in the region tend not to believe what American officials are saying," said Gamal Sultan, a researcher at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a Cairo think-tank.
Waleed Tabtabai, an Islamist member of the Kuwait parliament, said that when he first saw the pictures of abused Iraqi prisoners: "I felt that the Americans....are not really there to spread democracy and freedom but to impose the imperialist project of the American Empire."
"If Bush is really sincere that the torturing of the Iraqis does not represent American values then he should couple his talk with deeds. He should uncover what is going on inside Guantanamo (the U.S. detention center in Cuba)," he added.
The United States should allow family visits to the hundreds of Muslim detainees at Guantanamo, some of whom have spent over two years in custody without trial, and allow an independent investigation of detention conditions, he said.
The Arab commentators said that the abuses stemmed from what most Arabs consider the illegal occupation of Iraq by the United States and its allies and that this must end.
"No matter how hard Bush pledges to punish those responsible, there will be no guarantee these barbaric acts will stop as long as the sovereignty of the people of Iraq is violated by foreign occupation," said the Qatar paper al-Watan.
Abdel-Moneim Said, the director of the Al-Ahram Center, said that serious punishment of the offending U.S. troops could repair some of the damage but Bush did not seem to understand that people do not like to live under occupation.
"In all history we know there was outrageous torture and misuse of power that took place from all occupying forces in the world... President Bush should know there is nothing called nice occupation. Occupation is always ugly," he said.
Shocking
Arabs. Everything they do is ok, like stringing up burnt corpses on a bridge and cheering in public and later not bothering to appologize. But everything we do, like spending billions in reconstruction, losing our young soldiers' lives while protecting them and appologizing where we do wrong, is just not good enough.
Ungrateful brats.
I'm still waiting for the expressions of regret and apology from sand maggot leaders anywhere for the Mass Murder of almost 3000 of my fellow citizens, without the qualifier...
But Israel blah blah blah
"Arabs Say Bush Interviews Are Too Little Too Late". ALL ARABS, apparently. There are NO Arabs who think anything else.
That's what Reuters wants us to think. Right?
.... then of course you read the article, and they interviewed, like, three guys.
It happens again and again. I'm damn sick of it.
This is why you give no quarter to the enemy, their supporters, or those who aid and comfort them from within our own shores.
You know, if you were in someone's home at a cocktail party, and the host approached you in a low, hushed voiced and said "Say, I really don't like having you here", what kind of fool would stay around any longer?
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