A MacArthur-like protectorate in Iraq?
Most of the Iraq "news" articles in the Wall Street Journal are thinly-veiled left-wing pitches, in marked contrast to the Journal's editorial section, which is conservative. (This split personality comes from the fact that the head of the news pages is liberal, whereas the head of the editorial pages is conservative).
Today's Iraq article (requires subscription) was a shining exception to this rule - <font size=4>it points to a development with great significance - the quiet implementation of a post-handover occupation that is a watered-down but recognizable replica of the occupations in Germany, Italy and Japan from almost six decades ago:
As Washington prepares to hand over power, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer and other officials are quietly building institutions that will give the U.S. powerful levers for influencing nearly every important decision the interim government will make.
In a series of edicts issued earlier this spring, Mr. Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority created new commissions that effectively take away virtually all of the powers once held by several ministries. The CPA also established an important new security-adviser position, which will be in charge of training and organizing Iraq's new army and paramilitary forces, and put in place a pair of watchdog institutions that will serve as checks on individual ministries and allow for continued U.S. oversight. Meanwhile, the CPA reiterated that coalition advisers will remain in virtually all remaining ministries after the handover.
In many cases, these U.S. and Iraqi proxies will serve multiyear terms and have significant authority to run criminal investigations, award contracts, direct troops and subpoena citizens. The new Iraqi government will have little control over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit U.S. approval, say U.S. officials and others familiar with the plan.
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In March, for instance, Mr. Bremer issued a lengthy edict consolidating control of all Iraqi troops and security forces under the Ministry of Defense and its head, Ali Allawi. But buried in the document is a one-paragraph "emergency" decree ceding "operational control" of all Iraqi forces to senior U.S. military commanders in Iraq. Iraqis will be able to organize the army, make officer appointments, set up new-officer and special-forces courses, and try to develop doctrines and policies to govern the forces. But they can't actually order their forces into, or out of, combat -- that power will rest solely with U.S. commanders.
U.S. Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, who participated in the original Iraq invasion, will soon assume responsibility for training the new forces. With American commanders retaining the power to order the forces into combat, Mr. Allawi or his successor will be left with only "administrative control" of the forces.
Meanwhile, the media and telecom commission Mr. Bremer created will be able to collect media licensing fees, regulate television and telephone companies, shut down news agencies, extract written apologies from newspapers and seize publishing and broadcast equipment.
One of the new watchdog agencies, the Office of the Inspector General, will have appointees inside every Iraqi ministry charged with combating malfeasance and fraud. Appointed to five-year terms, the inspectors will be allowed to subpoena witnesses and documents, perform forensic audits and issue annual reports.
The other watchdog, the Board of Supreme Audit, will oversee a battery of other inspectors with wide-ranging authority to review government contracts and investigate any agency that uses public money. Mr. Bremer will appoint the board president and his two deputies. They can't be removed without a two-thirds vote of Iraq's parliament, which isn't slated to come into existence until sometime next year.
Few of the positions have been filled so far, but officials at the CPA and the Governing Council say they expect to name the new officials within weeks. The advisers inside the ministries are likely to be almost exclusively American, while the inspectors and members of the various new commissions will all be Iraqi. Individual ministers can dismiss their advisers, but many U.S. officials assume they'll be reluctant to do so for fear of antagonizing the U.S.
The nerve center of the U.S. presence in Iraq will be a massive new embassy. CPA officials recently decided that most employees of the new embassy will remain in a former palace used by Saddam Hussein even though the building is seen by many Iraqis as a symbol of Iraqi sovereignty. The embassy needs the space: It will ultimately employ approximately 1,300 Americans, as well as 2,000 or more Iraqis. The current occupation authority employs 1,500 people.
The U.S. plans to convert a nearby building into the formal embassy that incoming U.S. ambassador John Negroponte can use for ceremonial functions. In an unusual move, two of Mr. Negroponte's top deputies will also have ambassadorial rank. James Jeffrey will become the deputy chief of mission at the embassy. Blunt and often profane, Mr. Jeffrey, a former Army special forces officer, is currently the ambassador to Albania and has held senior posts in Turkey and Kuwait. Ron Newman, currently the ambassador to Bahrain, also has a military background and is likely to join the embassy in Iraq in a senior position such as defense attaché.
The U.S. push to continue guiding events in Iraq has been led by the State Department, where officials have grown convinced that placing the country under full Iraqi control now would plunge it deeper into violence and political turmoil, according to people familiar with the matter. |
