We are witnessing replay of the Bush doctrine at Lal Masjid. This is how US-based academic Professor Asad Abu Khalil chose to began his lecture on 'the Bush doctrine: assumptions and realities' at the International Islamic University here on Tuesday.
Describing Bush doctrine as another name for 'National Strategy for the US' postulated in 2002, he said it was premised on a belief that America must have monopoly and not tolerate competition. The US had stationed troops in 130 countries across the globe to act on the basis of this theory that a country likely to hurt it in future must be stopped here and now.
The policy had many authors. Intelligence agencies, the military and multinationals contribute to making it, but collectively, it gets the name of Bush doctrine, primarily, because it centered round the whims of the American President.
The scholar also compared the Lal Masjid situation with events in Somalia and Lebanon. We are witnessing a replay of that Doctrine here, and in the same way, as for example, the Machiavellian schism between Sunnis and Shias injected in the body politic of Iraq.
Nevertheless, he cautioned the policy would not go away merely because President Bush's credentials among the American people was diminishing. 'Some parts of it would endure through the next President because principally the American administrations have a love affair with Israel. They would go on endorsing the Jewish state's conquest of Arab lands'.
But even US opinion makers were of the view that after 9/11 Bush had unleashed a succession of wars in the name of terror, for instance bombing innocent children of Sudan in 1998. The funny thing about bombing in Afghanistan and Iraq is that 70 percent of bombs missed avowed and specified targets but succeeded in killing 600,000 civilians only in Iraq.
Furthermore, the case of Hamas and Palestine illustrated that the Western world would sacrifice democracy, as well as the changed position 'in creating a stable government in Iraq that could defend itself'. However, in Abu Khalil's views the US could not subjugate Iraq and therefore it was less able to intimidate others. For the same reason, and because it had less troops it could not strike at Iran. Answering a question about Muslim unity, he said the outside world exploited divisions among Muslims.
Replying another question he said Pakistan was a part of the general US policies in the Middle East. The US policy is to support and provide aid to a country willing to carry out US policies. He agreed that it was the duty of Muslim scholars to clear the widely held notion that the Muslims were not terrorists. It was done by a reasonable number of people, but there were also a group of informers providing intelligence to the administration.






















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