NEXT STEPS FOR IRAQ ARE BUILT UPON POLITICAL RISERS
GG not a Chalabi, or neocon, fan. Pollack basically said that the U.S. picked Chalabi because he had no support or connections inside or outside of Iraq, and it was thought he could mediate among the interest groups. I assume the neocons backing of the INC is related to their stated policy of recognizing Israel, something a "true" Iraqi democracy, whatever that is, would be unlikely to do.
Doc
Georgie Anne Geyer
Uexpress
Apr. 10, 2003
WASHINGTON -- As American troops swooped into downtown Baghdad this historic week, two impassioned authors and advocates of this war lent some illumination to the nagging question, "What comes next?"
First, Paul Wolfowitz, the pugnacious deputy to Donald Rumsfeld who is widely called "Wolfowitz of Arabia" here, said on television: "Our goal has got to be to transfer authority and the operation of government as quickly as possible -- not to some other external authority, but to the Iraqi people themselves."
Then, following up on that from his meeting with Tony Blair (held, strangely enough, in Northern Ireland), President Bush added: "The future of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people. After years of dictatorship, Iraq will soon be liberated. For the first time in decades, Iraqis will soon choose their own representative government."
These words sound good -- they ring out nobly as quintessentially American amidst the chaos of Iraq -- but this is also a time to hold onto your geopolitical wallet.
First, many of these grandiose declarations ring with too great a sense of utopian, dictator-prone "direct democracy," in which the leader individually inspires his followers instead of republican institutions being set up to discipline the political process.
Second, there are so many political agendas floating around the Iraq mission today (as there have been since the beginning) that one might think she has been carried back to the original Baghdad empire.
But, no, now we are talking about the "courts" of the supposedly pragmatic, democratic Americans, and particularly of the Iraqi exiles.
Even as fighting continued this week, the Pentagon sprung a surprise on everyone and suddenly airlifted 700 members of Iraqi exile groups into Nasiriyah in southern Iraq. The group's leader, Wolfowitz protege and London salon revolutionary Ahmad Chalabi, part of whose program was for Iraq to immediately recognize Israel, was brought in to be "basically the core of the new Iraqi army," the Pentagon said.
This act immediately set off further contention between Congress and the State Department on one side (both of whom had long distrusted Chalabi for his financial, shall we say, carelessness with American funds) and the Pentagon and White House on the other. In fact, in what members of Congress were saying was an unprecedented move, President Bush asked for the $2.5 billion in reconstruction funds to be appropriated directly to the White House -- and thus effectively directly to the Pentagon.
A memo prepared by senior Republican staff members for the House Appropriations Committee was quoted in Washington papers, noting that such an arrangement would erect a "wall of executive privilege that would deny Congress and the committee access to the management of the fund. Decision-makers determining the allocation ... would not be called as witnesses before hearings, and most fiscal data would be beyond the committee's reach."
And so continues the dramatic play of the antagonists within the administration over Iraq, with the Pentagon civilians trying to remove congressional or other control over the new exile government, under Chalabi, that they want to install in Iraq. That he would be seen as a quisling little bothers them, as they look around the rest of the region for new conquests.
This group is also ready and willing to change or bypass the Geneva Conventions, if necessary, because those precepts put stringent limits on the rights of occupying powers to make radical changes in existing institutions. President Bush is most often on their side.
But the State Department and Congress are fighting for an interim American military government, for including acceptable Iraqis within the country, and for working with the United Nations, especially in terms of humanitarian aid. Their intention is to deal with the future in more traditional, multilateral ways.
In short, then, the question is not so much "What comes next?" but what and whose AGENDA comes next.
"Wolfowitz of Arabia" said this week that Syria should be the next American target. Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, who is up for a leading position in the occupation, has said repeatedly that we have embarked upon World War IV and that the American people have to realize that. (He counts the Cold War as World War III.)
A few thoughtful men from the first Bush administration expressed some rather serious worries this week about where all of this is leading the true American nation, as opposed to the Bush/Wolfowitz/Woolsey new American Empire.
Retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft said the model set up by the first Bush administration in the first Gulf War -- patiently building respectful coalitions and working with the United Nations -- had clearly not held up as a model for the future. "We're moving uncertainly down paths nobody has gone down before," he said, a note of sadness in his voice. "The structures we've built to handle our security ... may not survive to serve us in the future."
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