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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James Calladine who wrote (14989)	6/16/2004 6:11:36 PM
From: Asymmetric	Respond to of 173976

European leaders swallow their anger, try to help Bush Gwynne Dyer / Salt Lake Tribune - SYNDICATED COLUMNIST / June 14, 2004 President George W. Bush has had a good two weeks on Iraq. A United Nations special envoy helped to choose the members of an Iraqi interim government. A United Nations Security Council resolution then blessed the deal by which the United States will allegedly hand over "sovereignty" to that interim government on June 30. And at the G-8 summit in Georgia, nobody openly criticized his invasion of Iraq and everybody smiled at the photo ops. By the end of the summit, he was so emboldened by all this international cooperation and good will that he wondered aloud if NATO might like to send some troops to help in Iraq. Is it possible that he still doesn't get it? The sovereignty deal, the U.N. resolution and the show of solidarity at the G-8 are all about smoothing the path so that the United States can get out of Iraq as fast as possible. None of the other major great powers except Britain approves of what America has done there, but none of them wants this to end with bitter and humiliated Americans turning their backs on the world, so they swallow their anger and try to help Bush find his way out. France's President Jacques Chirac bluntly called it "an exit strategy from a crisis." And what about Iraq? Most other governments fear that it has been fatally destabilized by the U.S. intervention and that it is doomed to a prolonged period of turmoil, with civil war and partition both possibilities. The problem was not so much the U.S. invasion itself -- that was a frontal assault on international law and the United Nations, but potentially beneficial for Iraqis suffering under Saddam Hussein's brutal rule -- as what happened after. The occupation regime has so consistently made the worst possible choices that it would have done better simply by flipping a coin each time. It disbanded the Iraqi army and the whole apparatus of the Iraqi state, although it clearly lacked the skills or resources to create adequate replacements. It refused to hold early elections for fear that the Shias would win. It has never had even half the soldiers that conventional military wisdom would dictate for the occupation of such a large country -- and as a result, overstretched American troops have relied far too much on firepower, random arrests and intimidation, alienating even the Iraqis who were initially well-disposed toward the United States. Those decisions were presumably dictated by the neo-cons in the Pentagon, but Paul Bremer, the outgoing head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, made his own contributions to the mess, such as seeking a confrontation in April with Sheikh Moqtada al-Sadr and his radical Shia militia that the CPA could not possibly win without damaging the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, killing thousands, and driving the moderate majority of Shias into revolt. The U.S. military authorities outdid Bremer by besieging the Sunni insurgents in Falluja at the same time, creating another no-win situation in which the only American options were to back off or to commit a massacre. U.S. forces have now given up trying to control either Falluja or Najaf, and further "no-go" zones for American troops are likely to follow. The myth of American military power has been smashed in the eyes of ordinary Iraqis, just as trust in American motives has been destroyed by the disgusting revelations about the abuses inflicted on Iraqi prisoners. "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss," Gen. Joseph Hoar, former commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate foreign relations committee last month. America's friends and allies think that, too. The other great powers are not trying to save Iraq with their U.N. resolution and their pro-Bush mood music; they have pretty much abandoned hope of a happy outcome there. If they were sure that Bush will lose next November's election, they might just wait him out, but since they are not confident of that, they are actually throwing him a lifeline. They are offering him the political cover that would let him cut and run now, because the worst possible outcome of this mess would be a U.S. catastrophe in Iraq, an Arab world in revolt against Western meddling and an embittered and isolated America that is still addicted to military solutions. The question is whether Bush understands that this is a lifeline and not a blank check. ----- Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries. [My guess is no, Dumbya is too self-righteous, ignorant, and ideological to understand he was handed a lifeline. Peter]