Wash Post: editorial: New Plan for Iraq

washingtonpost.com
A New Plan for Iraq


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56570-2003Aug27.ht

Thursday, August 28, 2003; Page A26


PRESIDENT BUSH at last has begun to speak more honestly to the country about the immense challenges in Iraq and the likely costs of meeting them. For far too long the president avoided the subject while his aides suggested, against all evidence, that the U.S.-led occupation could be wound up in a matter of months and reconstruction financed mainly by Iraq's own oil revenue. On Tuesday, Mr. Bush at last delivered a speech acknowledging that guiding Iraq from dictatorship to democracy would be "a massive undertaking" comparable to the reconstruction of Japan and Germany after World War II, a task that "took years, not months." The U.S. occupation coordinator, L. Paul Bremer, meanwhile told The Post that Iraq's economic needs "were almost impossible to exaggerate" and would amount to tens of billions of dollars more than could be financed by oil revenue -- and that's just for next year.

Administration officials now tout their plans for quickly expanding Iraqi self-government and security forces. Those projects are vital but not, as some would have it, an alternative to more foreign troops and aid; training and recruitment will take too long. What is needed is an effort to mobilize both Iraqis and the international community behind a detailed plan for political transition, reconstruction and peacekeeping, one that can be endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. With good diplomacy, there should be a way to do this without either surrendering to France and the contain-America movement or obliging U.S. soldiers to put on blue U.N. helmets. As a start, Mr. Bush and his team must settle on what resources are immediately needed for Iraq, how much can be obtained from Congress and how much from abroad, and what parameters and redlines should delimit a sharing of authority. Mr. Bush's determination to stay the course in Iraq is admirable. But if he is to succeed, the president also must be willing to adjust U.S. strategy to match the challenge he has described.

What planet does this guy live on?

Here's the full one:

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56570-2003Aug27.html>

What is needed is an effort to mobilize both Iraqis and the international community behind a detailed plan for political transition, reconstruction and peacekeeping, one that can be endorsed by the U.N. Security Council.

"Mobilize ... Iraqis". Even if PNAC/bush were to suddenly give a damn about what direction the Iraqi people want their country to go, what are the odds of attaining a consensus among the tribal and religious factions that have been hating each others' guts for centuries.

"mobilize ... the international community". The problem with this very necessary component of the solution is that the international community is not as greedy and criminally motivated as the PNAC/bush cabal. To obtain the cooperation of the international community, PNAC/bush would have to give up on its central tenet of American hegemony in the middle east, and would have to tell Carlyle, Haliburton, et al. that the gravy boat just sank. The international community is not going to be a willing partner to handing over de facto control of the middle east to the US, and there are too many competing interests for the rest of the world to roll over for the corporate FOGs (Friends of George).

"endorsed by the U.N. Security Council". The Security Council will, I believe, exact a steep price for any future cooperation with the US, a price PNAC/bush cannot afford: a sincere apology for its shameful invasion of Iraq and reaffirmation by the US of the legitimacy of the UN role in international politics.

George will be forced to eat every syllable of his statement where he questioned the UN's relevance. And the economic price for UN help to extricate the US will be giving up control of the oil spigot.

And that really is the crux of this administration's dilemma. They lose with either option-

(1) Humiliation, loss of oil revenue to offset our war investment, and defeat of the PNAC dream. Or

(2) Continue to go it alone, have the oil revenue sabotauged and troops lost in a unwinable war; facilitating the decline of US influence as we absorb continued costs to maintain an occupation army at our domestic expense.

Can't say that I feel sorry for the PNAC crew who engineered this debacle....hopefully this will percipertate a complete and everlasting repudiation of the entire neo-con movement in the US...the only good outcome of this fiasco.

They are boned either way.
Stupidity is it's own reward.