The Egyptian government daily Al-Akhbar has continually run an op-ed and
editorial offensive against the American administration led by its editor-in-chief
Galal Duweidar.
MEMRI Special Dispatch, July 10, 2002
An editorial titled “Seeking to Meet with Bush Is An Insult to the Palestinian
Honor” stated:
“America, which falsely claims that it is fighting terror, sows the seeds
of evil in the Middle East, and will reap terror in the future!…
Yasser Arafat has always directed plea-like calls to the American
president to complete the move of his father, George Bush Sr., who initiated
the Madrid Peace Conference after his victory in Desert Storm. But George
Bush Sr. completed the move by surrounding his son with Dick Cheney,
Condoleezza Rice, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. They are the
axis of evil in the American administration, because it is they who counsel
George Bush… in every matter.”
“We, for our part, say to Yasser Arafat: ‘If only you would stop seeking to meet
with the American president, because it insults the honor of the Palestinian
people.’
If only Yasser Arafat would declare that he does not want to meet with
the head of American diplomacy Colin Powell, because he is not
on anything. We already had a bitter experience with
, who visited the region a few months ago, and whose visit was termed
a ‘disaster!’…”(1)
U.S. Policy Led by Amateurs
In an article titled “When Amateurs Become Top Officials,” editor Galal
Duweidar wrote:
“Over many years and generations, we are used to having the
management of affairs of states and peoples are taken care of by professional
politicians… not amateurs lacking all knowledge of politics and its
administration…”
“What is happening now… indicates that the reins are in the hands of
amateurs. This fact is clearly manifested in the policy and behavior of the U.S.,
the sole superpower, under the administration of the current president Bush.”
“What intensifies this negative picture is that… matters are now in the hands of
the most extreme Americans, who, unfortunately, are amateurs who are easy
prey to wrong policies that do not serve American national interests nor the
interests that they think they are serving by these unbalanced positions.
One of the signs of this American trend – which has begun to arouse
hatred not only in the Arab world but also across the globe,
except for one or two countries at most – is the neutralizing of all the State
Department’s authorities to direct policy in a sensitive region such as the Middle
East.”
“This political failure was clearly revealed by the zigzagging in the
statement by American Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was supposed to
serve as a balancing factor in American foreign policy. Powell clung to the logic
of continuing contacts with the elected Palestinian president Yasser Arafat
because he is the only individual capable of steering the Middle East peace
process to a safe harbor, for the good of both peoples – Palestinian and Israeli.
But the hawks in Bush’s administration, such as Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, managed
to overpower him. This gang managed to coerce poor Powell to change his
mind. It forced him to go against all the advice of the professionals working in
the American State Department on American policy in the Middle East, and to
adapt himself to the philosophy of Bush’s speech…”(2)
The U.S. Does Not Follow Its Constitution
An editorial, titled “July 4 – the U.S.’s Renouncement of the Values of the
American Constitution,” read:
“…In recent years, the American administrations have been renouncing
the principles of the American constitution implementing or imposing their
foreign policy…
The Bush administration’s foreign policy, for example, contradicts many
of the principles of the American constitution such as liberty, justice,
democracy, and human rights. One of the most prominent examples of this is
the American bias in favor of Israel and against the Palestinian people and its
deeply rooted rights to liberation from the occupation, the return of its usurped
land, and the establishment of a Palestinian state on its national land.”
“Similarly, the U.S. has renounced all the principles in its constitution by its
refusal to sign the Kyoto Treaty for protecting the environment and by its
struggle against the U.N. initiatives to ease the debt burden shouldered by the
poverty-stricken Third World, …
by its stubborn stand against the establishment of the International
Criminal Court, and by all too many other examples to count…
If it wants to be rid of world terror, the U.S. must fight it from the point
of departure of acknowledging its error in renouncing the principles and values
on which its constitution was based…”(3)
Bush’s Idiotic Speech
An editorial titled, “The End of the American role in the Arab-Israeli conflict!”
stated, ‘We can say with certainty that the American role in the Palestinian
issue has completely ended. The American president Bush said so after he
settled into the White House the president of the largest and
most powerful country. He declared that he would not come close to the issue
of the Middle East because he has no knowledge about it and it does not
interest him!”
“But the Arabs and the Palestinians hoped that the American president would
be unable to refrain from playing a role in a burning region such as the Middle
East… We said, and believed, that if the American president will act – American interests in the region would be at risk!! Two years
have passed, and the regional American interests were not even in minimal
danger. What happened was that on September 11, the U.S. itself was
threatened…”
“Bush’s idiotic speech brought the Palestinian issue from the ceiling down to
the floor!! After the Palestinians had discussed a Palestinian state with
Jerusalem as its capital, and the return of the refugees, they found themselves
discussing Yasser Arafat and his historic leadership… The same thing happened
with Iraq. No one talks about the Iraqi people’s right to live in peace, and that
the sanctions on it should be removed; everyone is talking about Saddam
Hussein’s leadership and that he must be gotten rid of because America
imposed this topic of discussion on the world, while this is an Iraqi issue…”(4)
Endnotes:
(1) Al-Akhbar (Egypt), July 3, 2002.
(2) Al-Akhbar (Egypt), July 7, 2002.
(3) Al-Akhbar (Egypt), July 5, 2002.
(4) Al-Akhbar (Egypt), July 8, 2002.
