As the Christian world prepares to usher in 2008, officials from the east and the west are seen rushing in and out of war-battered Iraq and Afghanistan.
In just a few days the prime ministers of Britain, Australia and Poland paid unannounced visits to the two troubled Muslim countries striving to stand on their own feet after years of war, occupation, neglect and tyranny of unelected rulers once the darlings of the west.
France’s Nicholas Sarkozy went to Kabul for the first time after taking the Elysee Palace this summer. What brought him and the others to the volatile region? Outside the normal Xmas/New Year pleasantries and photo-op with their tired and bitter troops, there should be something important in the making, political pundits say.
Six years have passed since the US-led western coalition bombed itself into pauperized Afghanistan under the nonsensical pretext of fighting terror. Come March it will be four years since George Bush and Tony Blair took their countries into the Iraq quagmire. The two major military conflicts of the new millennium show not only no sign of abatement, rather they promise that death and destruction will be a growth industry in the two countries, thanks to King George and Lord Tony.
Leaders of many countries who supported Uncle Sam’s misadventures resulting in monumental human and material losses have over the years either resigned or told to find another job. In other words, from the initial war coalition put together by Bush, Blair, Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and the Australian John Howard, only the neocon boss in Washington has survived. He too is a near endangered species and will go into uneasy retirement within a year, of course that is if a long-sought impeachment for his Iraqi spin does not force him to bow out sooner.
In recent years change in the political power structures in key European states and even the Untied States has often come with a promise that sounds all too similar: To get out of America’s disastrous war on terror.
All the electoral results in the above-mentioned US-allied countries and in other parts of Europe have been directly affected by the Iraq war and the policy challenges that continue to accompany it.
For example, the people of Australia voted in Kevin Rudd and showed Howard the exits after tolerating 11 years of domination by the conservatives. Australians supported Rudd because he promised to pull out his troops from the deepening Iraqi hole and sign the Kyoto Protocol to protect the environment.
He delivered on the latter and paid a surprise visit to Iraq to prepare the conditions for the former.
Amid all the ground reality, Sarkozy not surprisingly has decided to swim against the tide and play a different tune. Instead of opposing Bush’s dangerous war strategy that has rendered the world more not less unstable, he has openly and loudly supported America’s failed Middle East policy under the neo-conservatives.
An increasing number of informed folks and peace-lovers across continents are frustrated with the protracted military conflict in both Iraq and Afghanistan that may eventually put lasting peace and stability in the same grave.
Small wonder that warmongering western regimes, who until yesterday were so arrogantly selling their brutal policies and military ventures on somebody else’s territories, today have a change of heart. With one eye on the election calendar and the other on mounting outrage among their peoples, the war coalition partners are talking about building the peace and settling conflicts through dialogue.
As the tumultuous 2007 gives way to some hope in the New Year, the new governments in Australia, Britain, Italy and Poland will hopefully float new ideas for conflict resolution in Iraq and Afghanistan and display a more tolerable side of their foreign policies. After all, this is the bare minimum they can and should do to address the visibly increasing anti-war sentiments across the globe.