BEYOND THE HANDOVER: New York Post Editorial, June 29, 2004
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June 29, 2004 -- President Bush greeted the transfer of political power to Iraqis yesterday with a spare declaration: "The Iraqi people have their country back."
Yes, but only if they can keep it.
The surprise handover of sovereignty came early Monday morning — two days before the June 30 deadline — and apparently was intended to head off any spectacular attack planned by Iraq's terrorists and insurgents.
The al Qaeda thug Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is known to have been planning a festival of bombing and bloodshed to mark the turnover, and it's no tragedy if the early turnover disrupted his timetable.
Even if it did, of course, he'll be back.
Certainly no one should view the handover as anything other than a milepost on the road to full Iraqi freedom — and a successfully concluded, albeit far from decisive, campaign in the larger War on Terror.
The transfer of sovereignty was, of course, both inevitable and desirable.
And given that Iraq's various ministries were already under Iraqi control, and the successor government to the Iraqi Governing Council firmly in place, it appropriately formalized a transfer of power that already was a reality.
Nor should sight be lost of the fact that — especially outside of Baghdad and the so-called Sunni Triangle — nation-building has been under way for some time. Town councils, for example, have been elected all around Iraq in preparation for national elections.
Of course, despite the formal end of the occupation, some 150,000 Coalition troops remain in Iraq, and the Iraqi state is still in no position to survive without them.
Moreover, it is worth remembering that the handover may make the Coalition's tasks more complicated: From now on, if U.S. commanders want to get tough with Fallujah or a resurgent Muqtada al-Sadr they will first have to get the permission of the Iraqi government.
On the other hand, the government under Prime Minister Iyad Allawi could turn out to be more willing than the Coalition has been to directly engage Iraq's terrorists.
The Iraqi military and police have no tradition of taking care to avoid collateral civilian casualties — and Allawi has already talked of imposing martial law.
In any case, Ambassador John Negroponte — who replaces Paul Bremer as America's top official in Iraq — will have to play a skillful diplomatic and political game.
It's a game with the highest possible stakes. Because the United States and its allies must defeat terrorism in Iraq — and must be seen to have been victorious there — if the West is to win the wider War on Terror.
But nobody has more at stake than the Iraqis themselves. A brutal dictatorship has been brought down, at the cost of much American and Coalition blood and treasure.
Whether freedom is to flourish, or darkness once again to descend, will ultimately be determined by the Iraqis themselves.
We wish them well. |
