31 August 2003

Policy Lobotomy Needed, THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, New York Times, 31 August 2003 Tom Friedman is spot-on this topic. This Republican administration has taken this country so far down the wrong rabbit hole that it will take decades to undo. I checked this article on Lucianne.com. Those guys still think that Iraq originally had something to do with the war on terrorism. Well, it does now since the U.S. invasion created a great big vacuum that is sucking-in every jihadi that can pay the fair. Dubya and company will be eating large helpings of humble pie as this thing unfolds. I told the Lucianne crowd that months and months ago. I also told them that Dubya is saddling the citizens of the United States with a great big bill because of his horrible preformance in the area of diplomatic preparations for the war. We have few friends that can deliver the financial and military assist that is needed. And Dubya snubbed the UN, which would be the only international entity that could provide him legitimization. Check in with Lucianne.com to re-confirm that "conservatives" are those guys with the biggest mouths, bellicose opinions, and most shallow thought processes. Remember, the war was over in May, 'cause HE said so, and the whole thing was going to be a big "cake walk" with the Iraqi people welcoming us and democracy with open arms. What planet did these neocons come from anyway? I hope the media continues to resound with a great big fat "I TOLD YOU SO". I quote Friedman: "No one can say with any certainty who was behind the bombings at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and the Shiite holy place in Najaf, but here is what you can say about them: They are incredibly sick and incredibly smart. With one bomb at the U.N. office, they sent a warning to every country that is considering joining the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq: Even the U.N. is not safe here, so your troops surely won't be. They also stoked some vicious finger-pointing within the Western alliance. And with the bomb Friday in Najaf, they may have threatened the most pleasant surprise about post-Saddam Hussein Iraq: the absence of bloodletting between the three main ethnic groups — Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. After the Najaf bombing, Shiites started blaming Sunnis, and Shiites started blaming each other. If you think we don't have enough troops in Iraq now — which we don't — wait and see if the factions there start going at each other. America would have to bring back the draft to deploy enough troops to separate the parties. In short, we are at a dangerous moment in Iraq. We cannot let sectarian violence explode. We cannot go on trying to do this on the cheap. And we cannot succeed without more Iraqi and allied input. But the White House and Pentagon have been proceeding as if it's business as usual. It is no wonder that some of the people closest to what is happening are no longer sitting quiet. The gutsy Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, acting on his own, told reporters last week that the U.S. would consider a new U.N. resolution that would put U.S. forces in Iraq under U.N. authority — which is the precondition for key allies to send troops. And Paul Bremer, who oversees Iraq's reconstruction, told The Washington Post that it was going to cost "several tens of billions" to rebuild Iraq. Both men were telling the American people truths that should have come from the White House. Our Iraq strategy needs an emergency policy lobotomy. President Bush needs to shift to a more U.N.-friendly approach, with more emphasis on the Iraqi Army (the only force that can effectively protect religious sites in Iraq and separate the parties), and with more input from Secretary of State Colin Powell and less from the "we know everything and everyone else is stupid" civilian team running the Pentagon. There is no question that we would benefit from a new U.N. mandate that puts U.S. forces in Iraq under a stronger U.N. umbrella. It would buy us and our Iraqi allies more legitimacy, as well as help, and legitimacy buys time and time is what this is going to take. "Other nations are prepared to help, but they do not want to join what is perceived as an American `occupation,' " Secretary General Kofi Annan told me. "If the forces in Iraq are put under a U.N. mandate, they can still be commanded by an American, like in Bosnia, but it will be perceived differently and provide the legitimacy for others to join." But this will not be a cure-all. Countries are not exactly lining up to send their troops into harm's way in Iraq. So, the only way we get a big troop increase quickly is for the Pentagon to reverse its awful decision to disband (and unemploy) the Iraqi Army — most of whom refused to fight for Saddam in the first place. We should be going to Iraqi colonels and offering to pay them to rebuild their units. They can prune out the bad guys. Also, the hard part of any new U.N. mandate will be what to do with Mr. Bremer, who, up to now, has done a tough job well. No serious allies are going to send forces to Iraq just to be under U.S. military command. They will demand a voice in shaping the political future of Iraq, which is right now the exclusive role of Mr. Bremer, reporting to the Pentagon. If the U.N. is brought into the political rebuilding of Iraq, a way must be found to tightly define its role so that we don't have 15 chefs in the kitchen. That would make a mess. Maybe the solution is to have the Iraqi Governing Council spell out to the U.N. what political role it should play — where it should stop and start. I don't know what Mr. Bush has been doing on his vacation, but I know what the country has been doing: starting to worry. People are connecting the dots — the exploding deficit, the absence of allies in Iraq, the soaring costs of the war and the mounting casualties. People want to stop hearing about why winning in Iraq is so important and start seeing a strategy for making it happen at a cost the country can sustain." 10:19:18 PM    comment [] trackback []

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