Baghdad or bust
Published November 11, 2003
I hear people like Joe Biden say we need to "internationalize" the effort in Iraq. I respect Mr. Biden, and the many smart people, the "loyal opposition," who share his thesis that we should bring in the U.N. and turn the whole Iraq mess over to the world community.
These are nice sounding words, but what do they mean?
Members of the same "loyal opposition" are also the same administration critics who accuse Bush of not having a plan for post-war Iraq. But every time I hear Mr. Biden and others insist on "internationalization," I think, "Okay, what's your plan?" The plan seems to go no further than, "Turn it over, and everything will be hunky dory."
What's the plan, my friends? What's the plan? Do you call that a plan?
Will "internationalization" fix things? Will it save American lives? Will it end terrorists' strikes? Will it convince the lion to lay with the lamb?
Is "internationalization" a panacea or a placebo?
There is only one way I see "internationalization" improving things, and it is based on this assumption: The "militants" now attacking American forces and Iraqi institutions and NGOs are driven not by ideology, nor religous fanaticism, nor a lust for the old Ba'thist power structure and torture chambers; rather, the attacks are simply the righteous expressions of Iraqi nationalism; these are attacks not to reinstitute mass burials, but to force the retreat of an illegitimate occupying power. If that view is the correct view, than only the U.N. and E.U. can fix things.
For myself, I don't believe that marching Kofi Annan's fair weather troopers into the heart of Baghdad will save a single life. International troops will just become international targets. Any force that stands between the Ba'thists and their Iraqi victims will find making peace a long hard slog, if the blue helmets even stick around past the first car bomb in their barracks.
The only way to fix things is to tough it out. We are supposedly the leaders of the free world. Well, what do leaders do when things get hard? They lead. They don't cut and run.
There are no short cuts on the road to freedom.
I'm losing confidence that the Bush Administration sees it that way. Where the plan once called for Iraqi security forces to receive three months of training, they are now getting two weeks. There is talk of moving up the timetable for creating a new constitution, for bringing about Iraqi sovereignty well before the 2004 election.
This doesn't smell like victory. It smells like political expediency. And that's not how you reorder a freer, more prosperous and more secure world.
What we have, it seems, is an administration that is accused of having no plan paying too much attention to people who not only have no plan, they have no clue.
- Baghdad or bust
- Published: November 11, 2003
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- Section: Culture
- Writer: Walter Enderby
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Comments on this articleComments
Sounds like a plan but this part:
"Repudiate all profits earned or to be earned by U.S. corporations"
would be the sticking point for the Bush bunch and is why it can never happen with an oil man as Commander In Chief.
Well, your first mistake is reading antiwar.com ... your next mistake is believing that the "militant" force care for anything more than death and destruction.
This isn't a resistance, it's a fight to bring back the torture chambers. There is no resistance in Iraq. There are only terrorists masquarading and resistance fighters. Until they are all dead, the U.S. would make the worst mistake of its history to pull out.
An election before the country has stablized and established the institutions capable of sustaining a democratic, open society, would be worse than a mistake. It would be immoral.
Pay reparations for what? Freeing people from Saddam's death chambers?
Oh, that's right, Sally ... it's all about the oooooiiiiillll! How stupid of me to forget that.
Howard, you are correct that there isn't anyone to "appease" here - there are terrorists killing Americans, Iraqis, and international aid workers. They must be found and eliminated.
Unfortunately, Mike's "plan" suggests his divorce from reality and his characterization of antiwar.com as "right-wing" confirms it. Mike actually thinks that these terrorists in Iraq are interested in democratic government? These people have been murdering civilians and aid workers, genius. Stick to the cheap insults and bad satire, Mikey.
-- your favorite walking wussbag (yes, Mike recently and quite randomly tarred me with the devastating "walking wussbag" label. I think I'll go cry now).
Notice that Mike used quotes around "resistance". I think that's an acknowledgement that motives of the instigators is somewhat questionable.
I think we can divide the "resistance" into three groups: former Baathists who want to revive a repressive regime, al Qaeda and like-minded terrorists who want to build a new and ideologically-derived repressive regime, and Iraqi nationalists who don't share the goals of the aforementioned groups but may increasingly see the U.S. as an occupying power. Actually, I think we can lump the first two together and treat them as criminal organizations; them we want to hunt down and eliminate.
It's the third group we might want to appease. And setting a deadline is a good way to send the message that we don't intend to stay. The problem here is that we have to be confident enough in our ability to establish order to keep our promise. Setting a date for withdrawal and then not honoring it would look worse than never announcing a deadline at all.
I'm not so sure the country isn't ready for elections. In fact, I think they've already held some for mayors and such. But just because the national institutions aren't ready yet, that doesn't mean you can't elect some of the people who will run them. In fact, I'm not sure how unstable the bulk of the country really is; that seems to be one of the issues we're already arguing about.
The call to repudiate profits obviously sounds like a dig at the Bush administration. But aside from that, taken just on the merits of the idea itself, does anybody really have objections to it? It sounds to me like it would be a worthwhile good-faith move.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/10006)
Here's the plan, baby, brought to you by Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com, the right wing anti-war site, as modified by me.
Hold elections immediately. It will be difficult, but elections were held in this country during the Civil War, in England during the Nazi air blitz, and in some of the Central American countries during the wars of the 1980s. Immediately. Tomorrow. As soon as they can set up the ballot boxes.
Announce a firm deadline for U.S. withdrawal, no exceptions. Along with the elections, this hopefully will take the sails out of the "resistance." People will be less likely to pick up an AK-47 if they feel they will soon have a sovereign democratic government.
Pay reparations to an international trust fund administered by NGO's, who will hopefully have some credibility with Iraqis.
Repudiate all profits earned or to be earned by U.S. corporations. This profit taking is outraging Iraqis and fueling the resistance.
Convene an international conference of donors and countries to draw up a plan for non-U.N. peacekeepers from neutral countries. Again, it will be difficult, but it may succeed if the U.S. repudiates ANY claim to ownership of Iraqi assets.
Will all this work? Maybe, maybe not. But unless we try, we are descending into a hell that will destroy what's left of U.S. republican institutions, if it hasn't already. An overbearing and interventionist military, said George Washington, is a threat to the republic.