The War of Terror was the catalyst for the Arab Spring

Today's Hot Topic, 9th September 2011. The War of Terror was the catalyst for the Arab Spring

The fall of tyrants in the Middle East and North Africa, especially when they are pulled down by the bravery and perseverance of their own people, is the kind of news everyone wants to bolster their side of the argument. So the anti-war crowd claim that it proves that the Iraq war was not needed to get rid of Saddam, while the terror warriors want to say that had it not been for their actions, there would have been no Arab Spring. The battle over the history of the 10 years since 9/11 has only just begun.

Yes: Bush was right
The links are all simple: after the fall of the Taliban, it was clear Al-Qaida would be looking for another home and that Saddam Hussein would be more than willing to offer the terrorists a welcoming refuge. So the war on terror took us into Iraq. The Arab world was treated to the spectacle of a brutal dictator falling and of the Iraqi people queuing up to vote. The fundamental defence of the Iraq war had always been that it would trigger democratisation throughout the region and that this was the only real guarantor of security. And this is just what happened. The “Arab Spring” was preceded by the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in 2005: young people, fed up with Syrian occupation, bravely went into the street demanding political change. The Lebanese street’s success at getting the Syrians out inspired the Egyptian democracy movement that started to get organised, with protest building up slowly and culminating in Tahrir Square. Elections in Turkey, liberalisation in Jordan and Morocco, even local elections in Saudi Arabia … today’s Arab Spring did not spring out of nowhere. The anti-war crowd are going to have to do something that really sticks in the gullet for them: admit that Bush was right after all.

No: Iraq was never about the War on Terror
Absurd! The invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with the War on Terror. There was no link between Saddam and Al-Qaida; there was no threat from Iraq. President Musharraf of Pakistan certainly doesn’t think there was any link, and he was in power where the war really was being fought. An unholy alliance of opportunists seized their chance: neo-conservatives like Paul Wolfowitz wanted to put into practice their theories about using guns to impose democracy; lefties like Christopher Hitchens wanted to help the Kurdish communists; the military-industrial complex, with Cheney and Rumsfeld leading the cheer, wanted to keep the gravy train of war on track … and George W. Bush wanted to prove himself a man by doing his father’s unfinished business. Nowhere does anti-terrorism figure in this story. Terrorism was the sugaring fed to an American public still furious from the wound of 9/11. It is extraordinarily insulting of this nasty alliance to now claim that the courageous actions of millions of Arab people facing up to Washington-armed autocrats were only possible because they had the example of the American military toppling a dictator with “shock and awe”.

Yes: You don’t have to believe Washington on this – ask the locals
There are people who will never be able to accept head-on that Bush was right. No matter. You can listen to Arab leaders instead. Look at Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Druze in Lebanon. As early as 2005, commenting on the Cedar Revolution, he said: “It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world … The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."

No: One quote – and look at its context!
You have found one Arab leader with some degree of popular legitimacy supporting your view and you think you’ve proved something! Well … let’s think for a moment about the context in which Jumblatt said that: Rafiq Hariri and he had been defying Lebanon’s Syrian masters for a year – the Syrians were breaking the complex, implicit balance that had kept multi-denominational Lebanon more or less stable for 15 years, and the local leaders had had enough of their heavy-handed neighbour. Result: Rafiq Hariri was bombed to smithereens, Jumblatt called on the Lebanese to go into the street and protest while he retreated to his armed compound in the hills of Beirut hoping that the Syrians wouldn’t get him there. Jumblatt wanted protection and gave Bush the quote he craved. It is just like the scene in the classic Coen brothers film, Miller’s Crossing, when John Turturro is prepared to say anything at all in the face of imminent execution (see clip). The telling thing is that Bush administration officials are still using that quote extracted under fear of execution six years later. Look, Jumblatt is a master of survival. He has even now become pro-Syrian. The only content this quote has is Jumblatt saying to Bush, on bended knees: “Protect me!”

Yes: Iraq put paid to the myth that the problem was Israel rather than internal
You can always pick away at individual pieces of evidence. Reject authentic local voices if you want. But the overall way that the Iraq war has led to the Arab Spring is clear. Arab autocrats have kept a grip on power by blaming every negative on the Israel/Palestine conflict. Instead of facing up to Islamists, corruption, a callous elite, lack of education and any number of causes at home for their troubles, it was always Israel’s fault. But in Iraq, that was not possible anymore. Here it was clear that Saddam had misruled and that internal problems were the only ones that needed to be sorted out to get Iraq back onto a prosperous, modern course. Here was a country with full American backing, billions of aid, oil wealth, and under no threat from Israel. Once that opportunity for hiding had gone, the writing was on the wall for the tin-pot Arab autocrats. We - and the Arab people - just had to be patient.

No: History will remember Mohamed Bouazizi as the catalyst, not George W Bush
Again, the re-writing of history is shameless. The Arab autocrats who have been deposed by the people in the Arab Spring are the ones that had full American support. Mubarak’s Egypt was the largest recipient of American aid in the world! The WikiLeaks cables may have revealed American criticism of Ben Ali’s regime in Tunisia, but that was for internal consumption. Ben Ali was praised as a bulwark against Islamism in the war on terror. Indeed, it is clear that the War on Terror served to keep the autocrats in power: they were the safe hands between us and the mad mullahs, so their every human rights abuse, their every murder in prison of an activist or a journalist could be tolerated. Remember Washington’s equivocation at the time that Mubarak was falling. There was no wholehearted welcoming of the Arab Street onto the political scene. The truth is clear: the Arab Spring represents a rejection of the War on Terror and the dirty compromises with brutality that it represented. The real catalyst of the revolutions was Mohamed Bouazizi, stall-holder in a small town in Southern Tunisia, who set himself on fire when humiliated by the pyramid of corruption above him. And right at the top of that hierarchy of humiliation stands the might of Washington, those who want to argue that war paved the way to revolution. No. It was a rejection of the system put in place by the War on Terror that has unleashed the Arab Spring.

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