US-Middle East Relations after September 11 - Case Study Example

I. Introduction Immediately following the September 11 attacks the first public announcement of President Bush portrayed this dreadful show of aggressions as an act of terrorism. Under the domestic law of the United States there is a specific definition of terrorism, which obviously qualifies them as terrorist attacks. To be certain, in international law and rule there is no commonly recognized definition of terrorism, due to reasons that are extremely difficult to clarify comprehensively but essentially associate to that worn-out saying that “one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter” (Moore, 2004, 83). However definitely under the domestic law of the United States this meets the criteria of an act/s of terrorism. What happened then? It seems that President Bush discussed with Secretary Powell and just out of the blue they altered the expression and depiction of these shocking attacks. They all of a sudden referred to them as an act of war, though evidently this was never an act of war, which is defined in international law and rule as a “military attack by one nation state upon another nation state” (Moore, 2004, 84). There are grand dissimilarities and repercussions, though, in the manner you address an act of terrorism in comparison to the manner you address an act of war. This nation and the rest have taken care of acts of terrorism before. Ordinarily acts of terrorism are handled with as an issue of domestic and international law enforcement, which I think, accurately how these dreadful attacks must have been handled, on no account an act of war. Certainly there is an agreement openly specifying that the United States and Afghanistan are party, namely, “the 1971 Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Civil Aviation, the so-called Montreal Sabotage Convention” (Buckley & Fawn, 2003, 61). Article 1(I)(b) thus considers the destruction of resident aircraft at the time of service as criminal offense. It has a whole legal system intended to handle this kind of situation and all concerns linked to it, involving allusion to the International Court of Justice to settle any disagreements that could not be resolved through mediations between the United States and Afghanistan. The Bush Jr. government plainly disregarded the Montreal Sabotage Convention entirely, including the twelve or other multilateral conventions previously on the manuscripts that address different factors and features of what people commonly refer to as global terrorism, several of which might have been employed and depended upon to deal with this issue in a legally recognized, and peaceful means (Buckley & Fawn, 2003). Provided with these conflicting definitions of an act of terrorism, it is important to look at the current relation between the United States and the Middle East after the fateful September 11 attack. In order to comprehensively discuss the subject matter, it is significant to use as a framework for analysis the national, international and individual leadership aspects of the strained US-Middle East relations. II. The U.S. Foreign Policy Preference: War and not Terrorism Instead, attesting again the hesitancy of the administration of Bush Jr. to make use of international conventions which could demand the assent of American supremacy to outside restraints, and in so doing hamper rather than make possible the fulfilment of explicit or implicit American goals, the Bush Jr. regime turned down this whole multilateral framework and referred to these dreadful attacks an act of war. They intentionally brought into play the Pearl Harbor rhetoric, 7th of December 1941. It was a deliberate decision to intensify the sentiments and awareness of the American public created on September 11 and hence remarkable increases the risks, both domestically and internationally (Gokay & Walker, 2003). The repercussion specifically is that if it is indeed an act of war, in that case you do not handle through international agreements and concessions: You address an act of war through the military force. You will decide to release an official declaration of war. Hence a decision was made surprisingly early in the development to discount and dispose of the whole context of international concessions that had been instituted under the supervision of the United Nations Organization for the recent decades so as to handle acts of global terrorism and instead declare war against Afghanistan, a member state of the U.N. In order to put off the thrust towards war from being delayed, Bush Jr. released an unfeasible ultimatum, repudiating all concessions with the Taliban government, including the general due process securities that are demanded between self-governing states connected to extraditions and others. The demands of the Taliban government for confirmation and bids to give up Bin Laden to an intermediary, analogous to those which decisively brought the suspects of the Libyan Lockerbie to trial, were absolutely disregarded (Lewis, 2002). Why such hurriedness? An act of war has a specific legal definition: in essence, “a military attack by one nation against another nation state” (Silberstein, 2002, 103). Even though this is what transpired on the 7th of December 1941, it is not what transpired on the 11th of September 2001. Nevertheless, immediately following the attack on September 11, the administration of Bush Jr. went directly to the United Nations Security Council so as to obtain a declaration legitimizing the employment of military power against Afghanistan and the terrorist network Al Qaeda. They were disappointed. Certainly, the Security Council decree that was taken on, instead of referring to it as an ‘armed attack by a state against another state’, decided these events as ‘terrorist attacks.’ And also there is a degree of dissimilarity between an ‘armed attack by one state against another state’, which is definitely an act of war, and on the other hand a terrorist attack, which is not the case (Silberstein, 2002, 103-104). Yet again, terrorists are perceived and treated as criminals. Terrorists are never dealt with as nation states. Terrorists are handled through domestic and international law enforcement. Terrorists are never granted the stateliness of privileged position under the international principle and practice. What the administration of Bush Jr. attempted to pull out in the Security Council was to obtain a resolution identical to that acquired by the administration of Bush Sr. in the culmination of the Gulf War in the latter part of 1990. Bush Sr. obtained a decree from the Security Council legitimizing member states of U.N. to make use of all indispensable means so as to drive out Iraq from Kuwait. The government of Bush Sr. initially aimed for a medium in there specifically sanctioning of the use of military might. The Chinese protested, hence the Security Council made use of the constructive phrase by “all necessary means,” while everyone was aware of its true meaning (Boyle, 2004, 129). Moreover, even though it may have been persuaded to do so, Iraq had in fact occupied Kuwait, which was in opposition to international law, a genuine act of war. At present the NATO member states are voluntarily signing up in the Bush Jr. Jihad against global terrorism in Afghanistan and other Arab and Islamic nations. We are seeing another medieval movement by the White, Caucasian, Christian colonial superpowers against billions of Muslim all over the world mobilized into approximately 58 countries, majority of whom are or are considered as ‘people of colour’ in the xenophobic Western way of thinking, and which happen to officially have the possession of the enormous oil supply and natural gas resource of the Islamic Middle East (Veer & Munshi, 2004).That is in reality the event transpiring at present. And if you doubt it, take note that it was Bush Jr. who proclaimed his Jihad against global terrorism a ‘crusade’. III. Conclusions Immediately after the fateful events of September 11, 2001, we appear to be enduring a broadening rift between the far-reaching American point of view of politics in the Middle East and the political standpoints of mainstream political factors and average people in the Middle East. An everyday popular American inclination to perceive the Middle East in rather unsophisticated, fundamentalist, stagnant and crude terms opposes markedly with political standpoints from within the embattled region, which indicate to a certain extent that the region is identified by an intricate and forceful network of diverse issues in an array of sectors. Among the most critical concerns that contend and at times afflict the peoples of the Middle East, particularly the Arab and Muslim World that I am best aware of and of which I allude to primarily here, are those of domestic governance structures, economic circumstances and patterns, the conflict between religiosity and secularism, the conflict between the Arabs and Israeli and its implications, and the composite, frequently difficult, relationships among the individuals’ ethnic and other shared identities and their state individuality. Further than the boundaries of the states, the region of the Middle East endures extremely perplexed relationships between the United States and the Arab states, and generally inaccurate, frequently conflicting, outlooks towards economic and political relationships at the domestic and global sectors. Rapid social transformation, environmental tension, and population-reserve disparities challenge majority of the societies in the region, which as well endure the effect of embellished militarism and its resultant economic exhaustion. Civil societies all over the region are at very dissimilar phases of development, as is seen possibly most apparently in the very expansive range of circumstances and prospects the characterize women and juveniles all over the region (El-Ayouty et al., 2004). It seems that ever since September 11, in majority of Arab states with hardy any exceptions, most of the distressing situations and trends aforementioned have stayed the same or even aggravated, and new tensions and pressure have been placed over onto the region as an outcome of home-grown and Western responses to terror, in the structure of the American-oriented and – led crusade against global terrorism. Several Arab nations have endured deterioration in their human rights and political involvement situations; greater state regulation of their population, and more oppression in several instances, are broadly perceived by the Arab public as their nations’ choice of methods of partaking in the war against global terrorism, provided majority of Arab nations’ exceptionally high dependence on American military or economic support. This has been predisposed to intensify anti-American sentiments at mainstream points and within political selected few, and has as well intensified local conflicts between Arab citizens and government officials. Arabs broadly perceive this trend as demonstrating emerging neo-colonial forces and ideals that pressure to transform the international economic superiority of the United States or even dominance into explicit military hegemony. The intimidation from the White House for coerced regime reform in Iraq after 2002, the abrupt growth of stable American military bases in the regions of Middle East and Central Asia, and the likelihood of a permanent American political-military company in Iraq are all broadly perceived by Arabs as indications of a new form of American imperialism (Brunn, 2004). These and other foreign policies of the United States are triggering a more expansive, more profound, and more dangerous and aggressive form of anti-Americanism all over the Arab region and the rest of the world, conveyed at times in the form of killings of American authorities, military officials, or innocent citizens in the Middle East. The significant fact to take note is that the emerging anti-American is motivated almost single-handedly by growing frustration and fury with the content and approach of American foreign policy in the war-torn region, and not by any anticipated resistance to fundamental American virtues of liberty, democracy, parity and forbearance. The list of particular objections regarding the means and content of American foreign policy is lengthy, and appears to be enlarging parallel with the more rapid outcrop of American power into the Middle East. Among the most widespread allegations that are made in opposition to the United States are that it employs a severe double standard in putting into practice UN resolutions in, for instance, Cyprus, Palestine, Syria, Iraq and other disputed territories (Brunn, 2004); it exploits countries when they are deemed necessary and then abruptly abandons them to fend for themselves; it makes generous assurances when it have to establish an alliance for war, then tends to stop thinking about almost all of the promises when the war is over; it merely assembles a global squadron against terror when the United States is devastated, but not when the rest of the world die in considerable numbers from the common evil; it blissfully advocates and uses authoritarian governments while habitually lecturing the virtue of democracy; it upholds an evidently disproportionate, pro-Israeli perspective in the conflict between the Arabs and Israelis while as well claiming on remaining the single negotiator; it dominates pompously to the world, creating temporary American political objectives the experiment of whether other nations will be backed up or abandoned to suffer; it exploits the UN specifically and advantageously, and neglects it when that confirms more valuable to it; and it pursues to characterize international standards through its own prejudiced principles and dogmas, comprising such significant concerns as global environmental conservation values, criminal trial, trade and industry and others. 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