Christine

Visions Of Life
2003-03-28 14:10:28 (UTC)

Suggestions

Postwar Suggestions for George W. Bush

The invasion of Iraq has deeply divided Americans. It has
alienated our allies. It is already providing volatile new
ammunition for Islamist terrorist groups searching for
impressionable young men willing to blow themselves up
just so they can take a few of us along with them. It's a
grim situation, but it isn't too late for the Bush
Administration to minimize the damage created by its
reckless and illegal war, now that we're committed to it.

A year and a half after invading Afghanistan, the United
States is about to seize control of another volatile,
strategically-vital patch of Muslim real estate riven by
ethnic and tribal fault lines. As it did before its war
against the Taliban, administration officials are issuing
grandiose assurances about noble intentions.

"We will deliver the food and medicine you need," Bush
promised Iraqis. "We will tear down the apparatus of
terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is
prosperous and free...The day of your liberation is near."

Only a few hard-right Republicans really believe in Bush's
newfound interest in liberating the oppressed peoples of
the world. Antiwar Americans, most international leaders
and the overwhelming majority of the world's population
still hold that the war is motivated solely by lust for
Iraq's vast oil reserves. One U.N. Security Council
diplomat explains his colleagues' reasons for
voting "no": "No one wants to alienate the United States
but you can't ignore polls showing 80 percent opposition
to the war," he said.

Opinions of America are even worse among Arabs, who note
that the only countries that Bush has invaded--Afghanistan
and Iraq--and is thinking of attacking--Iran and Syria--
are Muslim. Arabs conclude that Bush--a self-
described "born again" Christian fundamentalist--is waging
a 21st century Crusade against Islam. Only six percent of
the Egyptian public holds a favorable view of the U.S.
This in a country where scholars at the Islamic Research
Academy declared that "if the enemy steps on Muslims'
land, jihad becomes a duty on every male and female."
Bush's clash-of-civilizations rhetoric, sprinkled
liberally with Old Testament imagery, hardly reduces
tensions.

Nonetheless, both America's image abroad and Bush's
popularity here could improve dramatically if the former
Governor of Texas takes the following steps to make the
war look more like liberation and less like exploitation:

Promise to Lay Off the Oil. Aggressive elements in the
administration suggest that a new post-Saddam government
of Iraq--a toothless American puppet, similar to
Afghanistan's Karzai--should rip up its oil contracts with
France's TotalFinaElf and Russia's Lukoil in order to get
even for the UN vote. Houston-based Halliburton Co., where
Dick Cheney served as CEO, is reported to have already
secured a $4 billion deal to put out well fires and
rehabilitate sanctions-ravaged refineries. And Bush is
already scheming to raid $40 billion in the now-defunct UN
oil-for-food program to finance postwar reconstruction.

"How do we protect the oil facilities and bring in
companies and material to sustain and improve those
facilities without being criticized for taking over oil or
giving the appearance of somehow taking the oil?" asks Amy
Myers Jaffe, an energy adviser at the Baker Institute for
Public Policy at Rice University.

Simple: Bush should pledge to honor all existing
contracts, even--especially--with companies from countries
that didn't support the war. More importantly for a leader
whose top officials are nearly all former execs of big
oil, Bush ought to prohibit sweetheart deals of any kind.
Competitive bidding, not a cozy relationship with the
White House, ought to determine which outfits get new
contracts. And the people of Iraq, not the oil companies,
ought to receive most of the proceeds in the form of
direct payments.

Guarantee Iraq's Territorial Integrity. On March 21
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul warned that Turkish
forces plan to invade the Kurdish zone of northern Iraq to
eradicate "terrorist activity." If unchecked, a Turkish
incursion could lead to a new war with the Kurds, and the
beginning of the end for a unified Iraqi state. Bush must
issue two declarations, one guaranteeing full autonomy for
Iraqi Kurdistan and the other an intention of respecting
and defending Iraq's present-day borders.

Arabs will rightly blame the U.S. if one of their richest
nations disintegrates into civil war. Any invader, whether
it's Iran or Turkey, must be driven out by American
forces. And we can't allow warlords and tribal chieftains
to create fiefdoms within Iraq, as has occurred in
Afghanistan.

Let the Iraqis Choose Their Own Government. Bush claims
that he wants to establish democracy in Iraq. Now he has
to make good on that vow. That means creating the
conditions that would allow free elections--peace and
economic stability, reconstruction, a free press, open
electioneering, recognition of political parties from
across the political spectrum, including Saddam's Ba'ath
Party--to occur. Bush shouldn't be tempted to repeat the
Florida 2000-style backstage antics that manipulated the
results of Afghanistan's loya jirga--after decades of
strong central rule, Iraq needs a popularly-elected
president, not a puppet. Nothing would earn the U.S. more
respect around the world than rebuilding Iraq, allowing an
anti-American president to be elected, and then
withdrawing our occupation troops.

Rebuild Iraq. Few Americans understand how badly we
botched our occupation of Afghanistan. Hardly any know
that U.S.-occupied Afghanistan has been reduced to pre-
Taliban-style warlordism, that rape gangs rule the nights,
that the stonings of adulterers continue, that not one
house has been rebuilt with international assistance--not
even in Kabul, the one city ruled by the central
government. But the rest of the world knows--and that's
why they'll be watching us in Iraq. We have a second
chance to get things right--but it's going to take
billions of dollars and several hundred thousand troops at
least a decade to get Iraq back on its feet. But that's
the least we can do after subjecting the country to 12
years of brutal economic sanctions.

Get Out. If we're really going to be taken seriously as
liberators and proponents of democracy, we'll allow the
popularly-elected leaders of Iraq to lead their country
into the post-Saddam era, whether or not we care for their
politics. And we won't tell them what to do or how to do
it.

**********************************
not written by me




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