October 9, 2002

LOOKING FOR A HANDLE ON THE IRAQ QUESTION

By Tom Plate

PMs Howard and Mahathir take strikingly different views

(C) 2002 Asia Pacific Media Network

LOS ANGELES --- In the Asia-Pacific region, there is no uniform view on the Iraq issue. Many support the Bush administration, while hoping that somehow the war cloud will pass. Only a few are speaking up loudly. From Australia, plain-spoken Prime Minister John Howard is supportive and hopes for the best, while Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the warning voice of moderate Islam, fears for the worst.

The recently reelected Howard, short on eloquence but often long on solid judgment, supports President Bush's instinct about Saddam Hussein, despite polls showing that his countrymen overwhelmingly oppose pledging Australian forces against Saddam Hussein without a clear U.N. resolution and wide international support.

But Howard is pro-military action regardless of any resolution. Saddam, he argues, would never have agreed to a resumption of U.N. weapons-site inspections (as flawed as these procedures may be) in the absence of the threat of unilateral U.S.-British military action. Howard supports Washington whether its current aggressive posture is all bluff or serious determination.

In a forthright speech last week in Sydney, the conservative PM took the view that the core principle of national security could justify, if necessary, the Bush administration's predilection for unilateral preemption. America could invoke national security because terrorists have "introduced into world security considerations a new hitherto unimaginable dimension."

It's a solid point. And had Howard left it at that, he might have emerged massively influential in the global debate. After all, Australia earned widespread international respect with its successful peacekeeping deployment in troubled East Timor. Alas, he chose instead, in his remarks before the Australian Chamber of Commerce, to becloud, if not befoul, his position when he added that, whatever the pros and cons of an Iraqi attack, Australia needed to support the Americans and the British because of their similar values and "similar ... view of life."

That sounded racist -- and it was most unfortunate. Consider that all the targets now under consideration by the West -- the terrorists, Iraq, Iran -- are Muslim. What Howard in effect did was to invoke the us-against-them, white-against-nonwhite, Western vs. Islamic showdown that makes one shiver.

That's precisely the persistent worry of another prominent prime minister who has repeatedly warned about this. Says Malaysia's Mahathir, whose country has been recently put on the West's terrorism "watch list," the United States could win the battle against Baghdad but lose the more important campaign to build strategic alliances in the Islamic world. He is less worried about Bush's policy toward Iraq -- this moderate Islamic leader is certainly no friend of Saddam, either -- than about the core attitudes in the West regarding the Muslim world. He drew a large -- possibly overblown -- lesson from a recent personal experience at Los Angeles International Airport. Before a flight to New York last month for the fall U.N. General Assembly session, he and his deputy were subjected to rude treatment by airport security officials. His deputy prime minister was even ordered to take off his shoes and belt.

Mahathir, 74, read much into the incident: "They can check if they want to, but there is no need to be harsh ... I am not a terrorist." For the outspoken Malaysian -- as colorful as Howard is colorless, as critical of the West as Howard is solidly pro-American -- the experience reinforced his sense that the war on Iraq and terrorism will evolve into an anti-Islamic crusade, even if the American, British and now Australian governments intend nothing of the sort. Mahathir's point is that if even a
Muslim head of state cannot be treated civilly by the West, or while in the West, what of other Muslims?

Howard versus Mahathir, who's correct?

The answer may be that both will be proven right: that the United States will be rightfully acting within its national interest even if it attacks Iraq without a U.N. Security Council blessing; but that the net result will create a monumental wave of anti-Americanism throughout the Muslim world. If so, the impending Western assault on Iraq will launch a war with no real winners -- and Saddam could win for losing. Who wants that?

The following weekly column has just appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser, The South China Morning Post and The Straits Times of Singapore. The author, Tom Plate, is a regular columnist at these three papers. The column also appears in other world newspapers, including The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The Japan Times and The Korea Times. Email him at: tplate@ucla.edu.

For publication and reprint rights, contact the author directly or John Simpson (john.simpson@latsi.com) of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate International.

Previous Columns:

Germany Rushes In Where China Fears To Tread (October 2, 2002)

Has Japan Found Its Destiny in Koizumi? (September 18, 2002)

The Otherwise Benign Hegemon Recovers From the Shock of 9/11 (September 11, 2002)

Waging War Against Asia Stereotypes (September 4, 2002)

(C) 2002 Asia Pacific Media Network