“This is a horrible event. It badly damages America’s already
weak image around the world. This is going to complicate American
foreign policy, obviously, in the Islamic world, but will also
complicate American foreign policy generally,” said Ted Galen
Carpenter, vice president for Foreign Policy and Defense Studies at
the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank.
The photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqi war prisoners will
circulate through the Muslim world for years, and perhaps for
decades. “This has permanently damaged America’s credibility, has
permanently damaged its reputation. There is no way to overcome
that,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter said that according to opinion polls taken late last
month, 57 percent of the Iraqis wanted the US-led coalition forces
to leave their country immediately. The United States was viewed
favorably by only 23 percent of the Iraqis.
“That was before the scandal broke out, so I would think that
the support among the Iraqis for the US-led mission is now even
weaker than it was at that time,” Carpenter said. “I am certain
that probably 80 to 85 percent of the Iraqis now regard the United
States as occupiers, not liberators.”
With the abuse scandal, withering support among the Iraqis and
all the other bad news coming from Iraq, it has certainly become
much more difficult for the United States to move ahead with its
ambitions for the Middle East, said Leon T. Hadar, a foreign policy
analyst at the Cato Institute.
President Bush hopes to put forward the Greater Middle East
Initiative at the G-8 summit meeting next month to encourage
economic and democratic reforms in the Middle East countries. Most
Arab and Muslim countries, including the US allies Saudi Arabia and
Egypt, have rejected such an initiative.
The abuse scandal will force the United States to change its
strategy in Iraq and find a more viable one, Hadar said.
“The United Nations should be the main legitimate outside power
that will provide security for the Iraqis until they can take
charge of their interests. This is the only viable option at this
point,” Hadar said, adding that the United States should also allow
the international community, including European and Arab countries,
to play a stronger role in Iraq.
“What the United States needs to do now is to find a formula
that will come up with a clear, coherent exit strategy,” he stated.
“The bottom line is that most Iraqis want the United States to
eventually leave Iraq.”
Carpenter agreed that the United States should develop “a fairly
rapid” exit strategy from Iraq and turn over “real power, not just
nominal sovereignty” to an interim Iraqi government.
If the Bush administration goes in the opposite direction and
pours in more troops into Iraq, the United States might repeat the
same kind of mistakes as it made in Vietnam in the 1960s, Carpenter
noted.
(Xinhua News Agency May 13, 2004)