[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 66 (Tuesday, May 6, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H3663]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              THE REAL AMERICAN AGENDA IN THE MIDDLE EAST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, this evening I would like to include in 
the Record an excellent editorial from the Toronto Star written by the 
editorial page's editor emeritus, Haroon Siddiqui. The focus of this 
article is looking at the United States and our role in the Middle East 
and Central Asia. Though I cannot read the entire editorial tonight, I 
thought it had some excellent observations that are important for the 
American people to hear. It is often helpful to have a country from the 
outside looking at us, rather than us looking out at the world.
  Mr. Siddiqui writes that a superpower like the United States would 
find it somewhat easy to defeat an incidental power like Iraq, but to 
do so not only for its publicly stated reasons, fighting terrorism, 
liberating Iraq and triggering a domino effect of democratization of 
the Middle East.
  But, he observes, the real American agenda is now only becoming 
clearer. The conquest of Iraq, he says, is enabling a new Pax 
Americana, the exertion of American power. That goes well beyond 
control of oil, though that surely remains a central enterprise.
  He points out that America is pulling out of traditional bases of 
allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and probably doing so because of 
the rising conservative backlash in those countries to our very 
presence. He mentions that U.S. relations with Egypt have been placed 
upon the back burner; Egypt, of course, being the most populace Islamic 
and Arab country.
  It is no accident that the three nations, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and 
Egypt, are the region's most populous, but that America's newest 
partners are some of the most thinly populated, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman 
and the United Arab Emirates, all as well tightly controlled 
monarchies.
  People are a problem for America, he observes in the Arab and Muslim 
world. They are bristling with anti-Americanism, principally over the 
Israeli-Palestinian dispute, which remains unresolved.
  He points out that the pullout just announced by the Bush 
administration of 10,000 U.S. troops from a Saudi air base was long 
overdue, but it so embarrassed the ruling House of Saud, which had to 
place it very far away from public view at a remote base in the desert.
  I would point out in a way I was very disappointed that the Bush 
administration announced this current withdrawal so quickly, because 
Osama bin Laden has been given a victory. Osama bin Laden on 9-11 said 
to us that he wanted the infidels out of Saudi Arabia, and, among 
others, he was referring to U.S. troops based on Saudi soil. Why did we 
have to give him that victory? I think that helps to ripen terrorism 
globally.
  The article goes on to say that the kingdom with the world's largest 
oil reserves, Saudi Arabia, and the highest output, will lose clout as 
America now controls the second largest reserves in the world in Iraq. 
And he states that America now has a vise grip on the region with 14 
new post-9-11 bases, from eastern Europe, through Iraq, the Persian 
Gulf, Pakistan and Afghanistan, to the two Central Asian republics of 
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

                              {time}  2000

  The singular feature of all those new allies, he says, is that they 
are weak states. Most are undemocratic, if not repressive. So America 
is replicating its failed model of using unrepresentative regimes to 
suppress people, but doing it on new turf. He says this short-term 
gain, therefore, of victory in Iraq may come at the expense of long-
term pain and rising terrorism, as he sees America determined to 
install its own puppet regime in Baghdad with the majority Shiites 
being shunted aside.
  He then comments on the Bush administration quietly cozying up to a 
most notorious terrorist group, the leftist Mujahideen-e-Khalq in Iraq, 
and he questions why would the Bush administration even want to do 
that, a terrorist group that killed Americans when we were having 
difficulties in Iran.
  Taken together, he says, these American moves bear an uncanny 
resemblance to the British colonial enterprise of nearly a century ago 
which is still being paid by the people there. As America confronts 
this new world in the Middle East and Central Asia, it is worth reading 
Mr. Siddiqui's very perceptive comments.

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