A dwindling case for going it alone
By Thomas Oliphant, 7/22/2003
WASHINGTON
THE ONCE MIGHTY unilateralists around President Bush - Dick Cheney and
Donald Rumsfeld - are in the process of losing another fight against a broadly
international response to the mess in Iraq.
A year ago they lost a bizarre argument about whether to invade Iraq without special
authorization by Congress and without a last-chance effort to forge a workable
consensus through the United Nations.
The current struggle, however, pales in comparison to the one a year ago. The hearts
of the vice president and defense secretary are not in this one. Facts on the ground
have obliterated their case that a quasi-revival of colonial administration with the
United States running the show is feasible or even desirable. Facts at the Treasury -
$4 billion a month for an American-run occupation at an absolute minimum
indefinitely - have eroded domestic support. There is simply no case to be made for
unilateralism after three months of avoidable mistakes that are costing lives, treasure,
and international standing.
A year ago - most likely via the gentle nudging of Bush's father - the case was made
that the United States should not go to war with narrow domestic support and
virtually nonexistent support from the rest of the world.
It was a rare example where President Bush appears to have actually made a
decision after participating in a detailed examination of the options. The more
common and accurate picture of a disengaged, incurious, passive receptacle for his
advisers' machinations is so widely accepted around here that even the administration
officials desperately defending themselves over the crude manipulation of prewar
intelligence have in the process depicted Bush himself as little more than a
ventriloquist's dummy.
A year ago Bush saw the merit of expanding domestic support via a congressional
authorization for the use of force against Iraq, even at the price of going back to the
UN and securing Security Council endorsement (ultimately unanimous) for a
last-chance round of diplomacy and weapons inspections. His position won over a
great many Democrats, and it solidified the position of Britain as an ally.
At the same time, however, his henchmen made a colossal blunder in selling the
case. They had the high ground available - the unacceptability in the post-9/11 world
of a rogue state directly flouting the specific requirements of the UN. But they
abandoned it for the cheap and dirty trick of building a false facade of spurious
claims - not just about alleged inquiries about purchasing uranium in Africa -
supposedly adding up to an imminent threat to the United States from unconventional
weapons.
The cheap and dirty route often works in the short term, especially when the cooking
of intelligence books is involved. The administration's position was also bolstered by
the stance at the UN of France, Russia, and Germany - which let their opposition
become blind and unyielding.
In the longer run, however, cheap and dirty tends to boomerang, which is what has
now happened. As it turns out, the manipulation of intelligence was accompanied by
an equally outrageous manipulation of what planning there was for the war's
aftermath. In keeping with its unilateralist vision, the Cheney-Rumsfeld clique put all
their chips on an American-run Iraq, joyous in its embrace of American liberators,
financed by quickly restored oil revenues and built around their favorite Iraqi exile,
the occasionally honest and isolated Ahmad Chalabi.
That vision, always suspect but never examined critically (least of all by a passive
president), is in tatters. For the last several days especially, it has gradually become
clear that only the nature of its abandonment is in question. The first major clue was
not so much the refusal of the French to send nation-builders and peacekeepers to
Iraq without a fresh UN resolution internationalizing the occupation as it was the
turndown from India (long a mainstay of peacekeeping and a magnet for other
countries).
The second clue was a truly pathetic overture to Turkey - until now a consistently
bad actor in the Iraq mess, particularly in relation to the self-governing Kurds; only
the truly desperate would even talk to the Turks.
Now the preliminary diplomatic work is more in the open, and UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan is proving an adept, helpful figure. He has mixed cooperation with the
occupation regime and a willingness to legitimize the infant interim ruling council with
targeted criticism of the occupation's mistakes and a call for a clear timetable for the
withdrawal of American military forces.
The poles in this mess still have their adherents - Cheney-Rumsfeld's ongoing
message to the world (butt out) and the French-oriented riposte (no, you butt out).
Good will is in the air, however, and there exists a way to make postwar Iraq the
showcase for determined, aggressive internationalism it could have become last
winter.
There needs to be debate as well as investigation about how so much could have
gone wrong and how so much baloney could be fed to the public. This period of
reckoning for those who misled the world, however, cannot block or slow the vital
task of helping a broken country heal. |
