Americans must give in to Iraqis Gulf News

Opinion, September 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Americans must give in to Iraqis

Gulf News

30-09-2003

The Americans see their actions in Iraq as having been a roaring success, while most of the Middle East is watching in horror. The Bush administration regards its pre-emptive foreign policy as a grand addition to the world's diplomacy, yet the other nations of the world, as well as Kofi Annan of the United Nations, do not try to hide their fears that this concept will lead to a general free for all of war and invasion.

America is out of step with many of its friends and allies. It has lost touch with the rest of the world, and it is all the more frightening that it does not seem to realise it. When America talks of wanting a UN resolution on Iraq, it is looking for a way to get more countries to offer troops to the coalition forces. It is not attempting to rethink its unilateral policy, famously put to the UN by Bush when he had the arrogance to tell the UN that if it did not fall into line with the US it would find itself irrelevant.

Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defence, wrote this week in detail about Iraq, describing his pride in America's achievement in setting up the interim administration, establishing city councils across most of Iraq, having Iraqis start to draft a constitution, and launching a very liberal open-market economic plan for revival.

All this is well and good as a technocratic exercise, but does not serve any purpose if the whole project is not embraced by the Iraqis. The tragedy in Iraq is that by trying to do too much and refusing to give away control, and not giving genuine responsibility to the Iraqis, the coalition is in danger of long term failure. The best plans for government will fail if the Iraqis see it as imposed from outside. It has to be home grown, and welcomed by the Iraqis as their own. They have had the twin trauma of decades of terrible government, followed by an invasion of their homeland.

They need to have something which they will call their own, and will inspire their loyalty. This will not come from American tanks, nor from technocratic success. The ability to inspire loyalty will come when the government of Iraq is Iraqi, run by Iraqis and appointed by Iraqis. It is not possible to the Americans to do this. They have to learn to give away their power.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).