His father may have liberated Kuwait after it was invaded by Iraq 17 years ago, but on his recent visit to that country, President Bush was not exactly a rock star. Bush was trying to muster support against Iran as he visited Kuwait and other Arab countries.
Kuwait is already home to a large U.S. base and smaller camps from which American-led troops move in and out of Iraq. But officials there told Bush they would not turn their country into a staging area for hits on Iran. As the newspaper Al-Rai put it in a front-page editorial, "Mr. President, the region needs smart initiatives, not smart bombs."
Then there are the United Arab Emirates with their flagships Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the latter now one of the world's most dynamically evolving glamour spots. Not long ago, Bush was promoting a move by an investment arm of the Dubai government to take over operations in 16 U.S. ports. Abu Dhabi government interests just bought a 7.5 percent share of the Carlyle Group, an venture capital firm that famously employed the president's father.
But all that didn't keep a UAE newspaper, Al-Khaleej, from blasting Bush for "striving to transform the Arab-Israeli conflict into an Arab-Iranian conflict." And a Dubai paper, the Gulf News, greeted the president with skepticism about his self-described mission to bring about peace between Israel and the Palestinians: "We realise that containing Iran, selling more weapons and securing cheap oil supplies are the main issues on your mind as you tour the region," the daily paper said.
Last summer the Bush administration offered a $20 billion weapons sales package to the Arab countries with the goal of supporting "a broader strategy to counter the negative influences of al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran." As a way of coaxing the Gulf states to rally against Iran, the strategy evidently isn't working. Its failure is a sign that bribing would-be allies with arms doesn't make them forget that our dependence on oil drives our foreign policy in their part of the world, and that more creative, farsighted and altruistic diplomacy is desperately needed in that region.?
