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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (28280)	9/20/2003 11:06:59 AM
From: Crimson Ghost	Respond to of 89467

Punish Washington by rejecting its draft resolution on Iraq Jason Vest The Daily Star, 9/20/03 Was anyone at the UN Security Council talks in Geneva last weekend surprised at the meeting’s unsatisfactory conclusion? Short of a French rollover, no other outcome was likely as the Bush administration made clear its unwillingness to seriously consider French and German proposals that the US give up total control of the Iraqi occupation. In the way that only diplomats can signal intransigence, two weeks ago US Secretary of State Colin Powell affected a pose on the subject that fell somewhere between “shocked, shocked” and unconvincingly conciliatory: “If they have suggestions,” he said of the two most cogent critics of a US draft proposal on Iraq presented to the UN Security Council, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac, “we would be more than happy to listen.” That tune’s been called before. Doubtless the French and Germans haven’t forgotten how it all began - with Bush’s deceptively sweet lilt in 2000: “If we are an arrogant nation they will resent us; if we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us.” This tone changed into a martial cadence of exclusivity and duplicity, then built to a crescendo with neoconservatives effusing glee as they exalted a “paradigm shift” in the world order, confidently sounding the coda for insolent “Old Europe” and the insufficiently accommodating UN. Yet for all the bonhomie accompanying phrases like “coalition of the willing” and “New Europe,” the administration is back at the UN Security Council. In characteristic fashion, it has adopted arrogance over humility before a body where the support of France and Germany now takes on increased importance. It’s an inconsideration - not just to historical European allies, but to Iraqis contending with the byproducts of a misbegotten Pax Americana - that adds insult to injury. After maligning prescient critics, Washington now asks the UN to lend its imprimatur and resources, minus controlling political or military authority, to a dangerous and disorganized post-war debacle. There are two good reasons France, Germany and other UN member nations shouldn’t accede to the current US proposal. The first is fairly obvious: Granting a patina of respectability and an infusion of deferential assistance to an occupier that doesn’t know what it’s doing in Iraq will likely only make matters worse. Indeed, if the Pentagon’s track record thus far is a barometer, the US shouldn’t be anything but subordinate to the UN. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz’s March 27 assertion that Iraq “can finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon” was proven to be a gem of foolishness, idealistic dementia or brazen disingenuousness (or a combination of the three). Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s recent inchoate proposal for more Iraqis to take up the domestic security burden doesn’t inspire confidence - considering the Pentagon leadership’s decision to dismantle the Iraqi Army and police over the US Army’s contrary recommendations. And for all the Bush administration’s bluster about “handing over” power to the Iraqis, the American UN draft resolution characterizes the Iraqi governing council as a “principal body” of administration still under the control of US civilian administrator Paul Bremer. This seems less a mechanism for rapid democratic transition, than akin to what the great 20th century travel writer Harry Franck referred to as the “queer but effective” colonial relationship between Britain and Egypt’s khedive after World War I. The second reason not to accept the American proposal is, arguably, more esoteric. Accepting it would essentially reward the attempts of American neoconservatives to re-fashion the UN to their liking - and in a way quite different from the more democratic vision outlined by Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week. In a heady moment at Brown University early this year, influential Pentagon adviser Richard Perle all but danced on the UN’s grave, referring to its interaction with the US over Iraq as a “failure of courage” and a sign of its obsolescence. Perle argued that such spinelessness necessitated the dissolution of the Security Council as we know it. “My preference,” he said on April 1, “would be to convene a new charter conference for the United Nations and see whether we can reconstitute the United Nations so as to recognize the terrorist threat, and so as to empower the international community to deal with it … Until that time, no American president will have any choice but to use the power of the United States when there is a threat that cannot be dealt with effectively by the international community.” Or, to put it another way: Either the UN reorganizes itself so the US retains unquestioned control, or who knows where and when the US military might show up in the name of “securing a safer world” - which, we have seen, can mean full-scale invasion (devoid of realistic post-conflict planning) in the ostensible (but hardly credible) pursuit of weapons of mass destruction that may or may not be there, and that might, however improbably, find their way to an Islamist nut or any other annoyance the neocons choose to define as such. Indeed, Perle was so confident of what post-Baath Iraq would reveal, that he proclaimed: “When the war is over … there will be a chance to judge what we did and why we did it and how it came out.” However graceless the Bush administration’s return to the United Nations is, its mere presence before the international body is an admission of failure - and one that should not be rewarded by enabling continued US hegemony in post-war Iraq. Jason Vest is senior correspondent for the American Prospect and a contributor to The Nation and the Village Voice. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR