Bush finds panic and protests on visit to Mideast

Jordanian Yusef Mustafa Nimer could barely contain his anger at US President George W. Bush's visit. "This is a very sad day. Bush has become a symbol of bigotry and injustice towards Arabs and Muslims," the 32-year-old engineer said just hours before Bush was due to arrive in Amman on Nov. 29. "There he is slaughtering my brothers in Palestine and Iraq and is now hosted and feted by our leaders. I am ashamed." It was Bush's first trip to the Jordanian capital as president. Bush and his top advisors fanned out across the troubled Middle East over the last week to showcase their diplomatic initiatives to restore strained relationships with traditional allies and forge new ones with leaders in Iraq. But instead of flaunting stronger ties and steadfast US influence, the president's journey found friends both old and new near a state of panic. Mideast leaders expressed soaring concern over upheavals across the region that the United States helped ignite through its invasion of Iraq and push for democracy–and fear that the Bush administration may make things even worse. Bush's canceled summit in Jordan with the Iraqi prime minister proved an awkward encounter that deepened doubts about the relationship. Vice President Dick Cheney's stop in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, yielded a blunt warning from the kingdom's leaders. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's swing through the West Bank and Israel, intended to build Arab support by showing a new US push for peace, yielded nothing. In all, visits designed to show the US team in charge ended instead in diplomatic embarrassment and disappointment, with US leaders rebuked and lectured by Arab counterparts. The allies' predicament was described by Jordan's King Abdullah II last week, before Bush arrived in Amman, the capital. Abdullah, one of the United States' steadiest friends in the region, warned that the Mideast faced the threat of three simultaneous civil wars–in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. And he made clear that the burden of dealing with it rested largely with the United States. "Something dramatic" needed to come out of Bush's meetings with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to defuse the three-way threat, Abdullah said, because "I don't think we're in a position where we can come back and visit the problem in early 2007." After the meeting with Cheney, Saudi officials released an unusual statement pointedly highlighting US responsibility for the deterioration of stability in the region. Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, urged greater US action, warning that the Middle East was becoming "an abyss…. The region is facing real failure." In Jordan, meanwhile, hundreds staged sit-ins and shouted anti-Bush slogans at several demonstrations scattered throughout the capital. At one street demonstration, about 1,000 people from several opposition groups and political associations marched to the Prime Ministry building, where they burned US and Israeli flags and an effigy of Bush. At another rally, organized by Jordan's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, about 300 people carrying Jordanian flags and anti-Bush banners marched through the University of Jordan. One demonstrator held a sign that read: "You are not welcome in Jordan. You have our children's blood in your hands." "Many believe that sectarian violence [in Iraq] has gone well past the point of no return," columnist Hasan Abu Nimah wrote in the Jordan Times. "There are no quick solutions for either Palestine or Iraq. The situation in Lebanon, Syria and the rest of the Arab world is directly linked to both crisis areas. That simply means matters on both fronts are bound to get worse and the American entanglement in Iraq will deepen, too," he said. The core source of anger for Jordanians is what they see as the Bush's administration's overriding support for Israel in the Jewish state's conflict with the Palestinians. A majority of Jordanians are Palestinians who settled in the country after the creation of Israel in 1948. Anti-US sentiment also grew after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Some Jordanians sprayed slogans on walls in Amman that read: "Down with America" and "Go home Bush the murderer." For Jordanians of Palestinian origin such as Munzr Faraj, Bush is to blame for Israel's crushing offensive in Gaza. Faraj echoed the despondency of refugees, who pour scorn on Bush's pledges to address the plight of the Palestinians. "Israel and America are two sides of the same coin," said Faraj, 72, in his concrete-and-corrugated iron home in the Baqaa refugee camp north of Amman. "I am afraid we have been forgotten and denied our rights by the Americans, who are lying to us for the sake of Israel's survival," said Mazen Mohammad, a shopkeeper in the bustling camp, one of the largest for Palestinians in the Middle East. Even in affluent parts of Amman, Jordanians say Bush's policies in Iraq have radicalized youths. "Bush has created a generation of terrorists in reaction to his arrogance," said Mohammad Shahwan, the head of a centrist political party.