Four in five say Bush a failure

ABJECT FAILURE: People in the Middle East have slammed Bush's, pictured, contribution of Bush, pictured, to the region. (Getty Images)

Two-thirds of people in the Middle East categorise attempts by US president George W. Bush to improve business and diplomatic relations between the US and the Middle East as an “abject failure”, the latest ArabianBusiness.com survey has revealed.

Bush, who is in Abu Dhabi on Sunday to deliver the key address of a whirlwind regional tour, has built much of his political platform on his ability to advance freedom and democracy in the Middle East and to strengthen US ties to the region.

But 80% of respondents to the survey feel that the president's contributions to Middle East business and diplomacy have been a resounding failure.

Almost one-fifth of those polled believe Bush “oversimplified the issues and created many more problems than he solved”, describing the president's contributions to regional politics as a “mitigated failure”.

A further two-thirds of respondents believe there are no mitigating factors to the president’s misadventures in the Middle East, characterising his intervention as an “abject failure” and that "it would have been better if the US had just not got involved".

Responses to a similar poll on the ArabianBusiness.com Arabic website was even more scathing, with more than 80% calling Bush’s diplomatic and military exercises in the region an "abject failure" and only one in twenty saying his ambitions in the Middle East yielded any kind of success, mitigated or qualified.

Results of the poll come at a time when tensions between the US and Iran are at boiling point following a spat in the Strait of Hormuz leading up to the president’s arrival in Israel on January 9, and ongoing political friction concerning Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The president, who used the first leg of his tour to declare Iran a “threat to world peace”, received a mixed reception when he flew to Bahrain, home of the US navy’s fifth fleet, on Saturday.

Bahrain’s King Hamad hailed the US as “a friend, an ally and a partner” while protestors outside carried banners reading “Get out of Bahrain, criminal”, “No to the US military presence in Bahrain”, and “America cares for oil, not democracy”.

The tour, in which includes stops in Israel, Palestine, Bahrain, the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, ends on January 16.

Many view Bush’s tour as a last ditch effort to make a positive contribution to the Middle East before he steps down at the end of this year.

Bush's previous endeavours in the region, such as the Iraq war, have drawn heavy international criticism and have seen the president’s approval ratings at home drop to the second worst in history for a US president.

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READERS' COMMENTS

Too Little, Too Late
Posted by T Crowe, Fayetteville AR, USA on Sunday 13 January 2008 at 19:25 UAE time

As a citizen of the USA and Professor of Sociology I agree The Bush regime is a complete failure both domestically and in foreign relations / diplomacy. From the illegal war in Iraq to the sabotaged US economy / dollar. The number of "abject failures" is too long to list. I can not believe that his actions were due to ignorance, even though his IQ is 98. When a leader has the resources to access the greatest intellecuals in the world to give feedback on decision options for the challenges faced both domestically and internationally then chooses to listen to a group of "Neo-Cons" with radical world domination agendas the world has a big problem. This administrations ties to the oil corporations and the military industrial corporations have placed the whole World in grave danager so that the "power elite" may rake-in astronomical profits. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, and George W. Bush should all have criminal charges brought against them including war crimes, high treason for the sabotage of the US economy and the dismantled US Constitution. Due to the "Patriot Act" the USA has been on the verge of Fascism. I have addressed these issues in my classroom and with my colleagues since the invasion of Iraq and the Patriot act. "Too little too late" maybe. However, Our focus is now on the new elections and a new leader for our country.

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