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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Uncle Sam Came to Town Uncle Sam Came to Town Tariq A. Al-Maeena, talmaeena@aol.com What can be expected of a lame-duck US president on his first trip to the Kingdom? Would it win over and inspire the many skeptics that the US was finally going to play the honest broker in the region? To get answers to those questions and more, I literally hit the proverbial streets. While most people witnessed the ceremonial pomp and hand-holding splashed over his arrival on the state-run media, many confessed that they quickly switched the channel to a more palatable fare. The reason? Bush is not very popular here. In fact, his popularity rating is so low that it makes him one of the world’s undesirables. A stockbroker in Jeddah says, “This visit is useless. Bush is at the end of his term and has no real influence on any issue in the region — except for what the Israelis want. He is trying to convince Arab leaders to buy more arms to face Iran, which is a threat to Israel, and not to the Arab world. Guess who will benefit from a war or high tensions in the Gulf area? The invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and the focus on Iran is to transfer the attention from the Israeli-Palestinian issue to other areas.” Maha, a schoolteacher, adds, “The message was clear during the first stop — Israel. That was the first priority: Israel and its security and its people. There was the treaty signed a few weeks earlier between the US and Israel for security. So now, in addition to $30 billion in military aid to a country that trains US forces in surveillance and other military tactics, he wants us to spend $20 billion for military planes and weapons we don’t need.” Khaled, a bakery owner on the outskirts of Riyadh, had this to add. “Bush is not here to promote a solution to help the Palestinians. He is in the region to gather support against Iran. After what he has done in Afghanistan and Iraq, his advisers should have talked him out of this trip as he will not get the agreements he wants — which is to make war against a neighboring country.” James, a longtime resident in the Kingdom, had this to add from Riyadh: “it’s rather pathetic that he is coming here now and putting on such a silly show. His speech in Abu Dhabi was ridiculous. He doesn’t have to come here to repeat his stereotypical story on Iran. The same vocabulary and arguments were used for Afghanistan and Iraq, and he isn’t even creative enough to change it.” Basma, a housewife, added referring to his constant theme of peace process, “His mission will be a failure. This is a last-gasp attempt to revive a project that is doomed, due to its connecting systems failing, in the same way the internal organs of a dying person fail. The constant lies and destructive actions have boomeranged on him and his lot. He will go down in history as a failure.” Khaled from Qassim had this to say: “This is just a publicity stunt to improve the image of the US in the Arab world. In seven years, he didn’t make any encouraging move toward resolving regional issues, and you think he will catch up what he missed all this time in the remaining year in the White House? He has wasted so much of his country’s resources to promote his aggressive visions and has weakened the power of the US in the world. He didn’t even give stability and security to the two countries he invaded. Nor did he offer any proof of the claims he made to justify creating the mess; in fact, the more he continues his wars, the more terrorism we are going to face.’ Other comments included: — “He leaves office by the end of the year and starts this tour now to fix his relations so that after he leaves office we can build his presidential library and give him donations and a job in an oil company.” — “All I can think of is that he’s coming to collect his end-of-service reward.” — “The Arms deals! Aren’t we all sick of this garbage! It’s sheer crap!” — He’s done enough damage to the world. Tell the man to return and never come back. — Everyone treated him really well despite his poor success rate because we are a hospitable people and he is finally leaving. And, finally, one that may have summed it up all. “The Israelis were still building illegal settlements and killing Palestinians while Bush was in the Middle East. Doesn’t that tell you something? This visit wasn’t about peace.”
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