KUWAIT: According to Dr W. Andrew Terrill, a Middle East expert at the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, the US is not planning a military strike against Iran in the foreseeable future. Dr Terrill, who is widely published in academic journals and was previously a non-proliferation analyst for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, lectured on US policies in the Gulf on Wednesday night at Kuwait's Aware Centre, with the topics of Iran and Iraq taking centre stage. Dr Terrill dismissed the notion that the US may attack Iran saying the state was currently "stretched thin in wars on two fronts Iraq and Afghanistan."
He noted that the reservist fought war in Iraq was wearing thin on US public opinion and expressed his own feelings of distress when seeing young military men in his home town return from Iraq with only one arm.
Of the 2006 Seymour Hersh New Yorker article which suggested Bush has a clear plan in the works to attack Iran, Terrill, while paying his respects to Hersh as a journalist, said he believed Hersh's anti-war stance may have slanted Hersh's view of the facts.
Terrill made the case against a US attack by suggesting it may be useful as a threat but the reality of US President Bush beginning a war on a third front is highly unlikely when the situation in Iraq is dire. He said, "The current planned surge (of additional troops being sent to Iraq) is controversial in the arena of US public opinion... President Bush's presidency will be judged on (the outcome) Iraq."
The 2006 Dubai Ports World US deal, which was derailed by US lawmakers and an outraged mis-educated public, was called racism by Dr. Terrill, who chided US neo conservative media pundits for inflaming the matter and spouting off fear based opinion.
He noted in reference to the UAE and DPW deal as well as in relation to all US allies in the Gulf, "Good allies must not be treated as expendable." Terrill, who is clearly not a Bush fan, praised the president for his defence of the UAE in the DPW deal saying, "He should have been given a medal for what he did."
In his December 2006 monograph entitled "Regional Fears of Western Primacy and the Future of US Middle Eastern Basing Policy" Terrill said, "A staggering amount of utterly inaccurate information was put forth during this controversy to a public that was almost completely unaware of the existence of the UAE, let alone the value of its friendship to the United States."
The Aware (Advocate for Western-Arab Relations) Centre, which hosted Dr Terrill's lecture, was established in 2003, is a non-profit organization and is not affiliated to any political or governmental agency. The center seeks to provide cultural exchanges between Westerners and Arabs and introduce Westerners to Arab-Islamic culture through dialogue, educational programs and social activities.
By Ahmad Al-Khaled
© Kuwait Times 2007
