Between two flight-suit moments

Jordans King Abdullah was in the U.S. bargaining for aid when he heard about the
grisly death of combat pilot Muazz al-Kasasbeh. Negotiations for the Jordanian
pilots release had been underway since he was captured by the Islamic State (IS)
while flying a sortie over Syria on December 24. A hostage swap seemed feasible till
the video of Muazzs immolation came to light.
Abdullah reached into a familiar repertoire of wild-west movies for a response. Clint
Eastwood seemed just right, with his 1992 film Unforgiven, set in a time when
frontier justice prevailed. Within hours, Jordan executed two terrorism convicts, one
of them an Iraqi woman, allegedly a failed suicide bomber from a sequence of
attacks in the Jordanian capital in 2005.
Abdullah arrived back in his country soon after, heralded by an increased aid pledge
from the U.S. As Jordans air-force geared up for a series of bombing raids on IS
operational bases, Abdullah portrayed himself in the media in combat flight-suit,
signalling he was personally in charge.
Abdullahs display of military machismo stirred mixed memories. Early in his twoterm presidential tenure as he launched the global war on terror (GWOT), George
Bush was prone to frequently invoke the vocabulary and spirit of the gunslinger from
the wild-west. He had a briefly lived moment of triumph, which he has since been
desperate to live down: a bravura strut in flight-suit across the deck of a U.S. aircraft
carrier, the backdrop emblazoned with a Mission Accomplished banner.
Twelve years on, it needs to be asked: what precisely has been accomplished
between the two flight-suit moments? It all began at a memorial service for the
victims of 9/11, an occasion for Bush to claim the legitimacy denied by a deeply
contentious election outcome. The event held at the National Cathedral in
Washington DC, saw the closest to a proclamation of holy war. "This conflict was
begun on the timing and terms of others, said Bush: It will end in a way, and at a
time, of our choosing."
As the GWOT metastasised from the pursuit of terrorist mastermind Osama bin
Laden, to Iraqs phantom weapons of mass destruction, to something akin to a video
game played on remote consoles, forces on the ground mutated. What was

imagined to be a small band of terrorists under al-Qaeda franchise became an army

with full spectrum skills to handle battlefield and guerrilla engagements. Luxury of
choice denied, the U.S. was being pulled irresistibly into a war without end.
Early suspicions about the IS being sustained by Saudi Arabia and other gulf
emirates were met with elaborately simulated outrage. The connections though,
began to emerge as the army led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi alumnus of the U.S.
torture and detention centre at Camp Bucca in Iraq notched up one improbable
victory after another.
British journalist Patrick Cockburn has in a recent book argued that key decisions
that enabled al-Qaeda to survive and later to expand, were made in the hours
immediately after 9/11. Every trail the hijackers left that day led to Saudi Arabia. The
official inquiry indeed, found that al-Qaeda was financed primarily by the Gulf
countries and particularly Saudi Arabia. Far from demanding an explanation, Bush
facilitated an exit of senior Saudis, including bin Laden relatives from U.S. territory,
when air traffic was otherwise paralysed. Most significant, says Cockburn, twentyeight pages of the 9/11 Commission Report about the relationship between the
attackers and Saudi Arabia were cut and never published.
If you break it, you own it. Just days before Bush launched his invasion of Iraq,
Colin Powell, then U.S. Secretary of State, warned him about the law of unintended
consequences. The chaotic aftermath of Bushs war has no owners, only perhaps a
surfeit of witch remedies that promise to worsen the disease.
The invasion led to an enormous accretion to the strategic influence of Iran, till then
kept in check by Iraqs Baath regime. In the ensuing chaos, sectarian identities
hardened and Sunni Muslim tribes mobilised to wage full-scale war against Shia
dominance. As Syria erupted in civil war in 2011, U.S. allies and proxies, notably
Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, stepped in, competing zealously to bring down the
Bashar al-Assad regime.
IS was nurtured within this rapidly expanding arena of political meltdown by
generous infusions from the Gulf potentates. With promises of heightened U.S. aid,
Jordan has now joined the fight against forces it has been partially responsible for
creating. Jordan is now assured of aid totalling $ 1 billion, or $ 150 per capita. Of

this, some two-thirds could be viewed as reward for being an Arab state formally at
peace with Israel, and the rest as incentive for taking on the IS.
For its part, Israel continues to benefit from U.S. aid that could range from $ 3.5 to 6
billion a year, or over $ 550 per capita at the lower end -- for each of its Jewish
citizens. Despite its peace with Jordan, Israel fights on the other side of the emerging
regional conflagration. On January 19, Israel bombed frontline positions in Syria,
killing an Iranian general and top personnel of the Lebanese Shia political party
Hezbollah, then engaged in logistical support for al-Assads besieged army in its
battle against the IS.
As enemy of an enemy, the IS is Israels friend a friendship that dare not speak its
name. The al-Assad dynasty, despite all past favours rendered, is an obstacle Israel
needs to clear. While seeding chaos across the region, Israel is in retreat behind a
security fence against acts of resistance from a people held in captivity for
generations. Its Saudi allies have just contracted with the French company EADS
builder of Airbus planes to fence off the border with Iraq. In the centenary years of
the First World War, the Arab state system, a legacy of that act of imperial perfidy
called the Sykes-Picot agreement, is in serious danger of unravelling. Those
authoring the chaos either sit at a safe distance or seek protection behind walls.