Posted on 04/02/2003 6:56:33 AM PST by Remedy
This is how Berlin must have been in the worst days of the Cold War. Spies in the shadows, intrigues in the hotel lobbies, discreet meetings in cafes, as the would-be successors to Saddam Hussein jockey and maneuver for position.
It is the same in Tehran, in Amman, in Ankara and in Damascus, as all Iraq's neighbors try desperately to work out who will run the place when the dust finally settles.
Throughout this region, politicians and generals and media assume that the Americans will pick Iraq's next ruler. This is the Middle East, where nobody believes the American protestations that the Iraqis themselves will choose who will rule them. Even the Americans, they smile knowingly, could not be so naïve.
As coalition troops close in on the Iraqi capital, the question is becoming urgent.
The lights are back on in Umm Qasr. And the water is flowing again. A hospital in An Nasiriyah will re-open this week, under Iraqi management. In An Najaf, U.S. officers are talking with local tribal leaders about setting up a council of Iraqis to run the city. The war still rages, so these are very early days to be thinking about post-war governance, but facts are being created on the ground.
Serious tensions have erupted between the Bush administration and the Iraqi exiles who assumed they would slide in power on the heels of the U.S. troops. A gathering of several Iraqi exiles recently met in Salahuddin, a town in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. There are four main groups. There are the leaders of the two Kurdish zones, each with its own prime minister and armed force. There is the London-based and U.S.-financed Iraqi National Congress, led by the urbane ex-banker Ahmed Chalabi. And there is the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the main Shiite Muslim opposition group, and long backed by Iran.
In the name of their "Council of the Leadership of the Iraqi Opposition," they announced that they would (in agreement with local leaders inside Iraq) establish an independent, provisional government and set a time line for the withdrawal of the U.S. troops who put them in power. The U.S. State Department said, "No."
"We do not support the creation of a provisional government by the outside Iraqi opposition at this time," said official spokesman Richard Boucher. "We believe that creating a new government for the Iraqi people, prior to the liberation of the country, before those Iraqis inside Iraq can make their views known, would disenfranchise the vast majority of Iraqis who continue to live under the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein."
That statement undermined the efforts of the exile leaders to form a common front. The Kurds say their troops are now under U.S. command. SAIRI has said it will remain neutral in the war. And the INC, long regarded by suspicion in the State Department and CIA, has turned to its supporters in the Pentagon. Half the intriguers in Kuwait, unfamiliar with the bureaucratic wars of the Potomac, are trying to work out what devilish double game the cunning Americans are playing.
All this puts former U.S. Gen. Jay Garner, named to run Iraq's interim administration, in a tricky position. Already facing an Iraq far more devastated and more hostile than once envisaged, he no longer talks of "working ourselves out of a job within 90 days."
Four questions now arise:
First -- Did the exiles ever have much influence inside Iraq? The conference of exile leaders called on the Iraqi people to "prepare to launch an uprising and liberate cities and villages" -- to notably little effect.
Second -- What kind of potential leadership can possibly emerge from a country run by Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party for three decades? There may be a military man -- since any new regime will need a loyal army. There may be a figure with religious credentials, most likely from the Shiites, but possibly vulnerable to the looming presence of the Iranian Shiite neighbor. There may be a "reformed" Baathist, like those reformed Communists who now run so much of former Soviet empire.
Third -- Can the Americans persuade their British allies (and the United Nations) to go along with their plan for General Garner's civilian administration, with three or four Iraqi advisers advising the U.S. "commissioners" who will run the country's 23 ministries? (The Pentagon is already bad-mouthing this plan as "too bureaucratic.")
Fourth -- Assuming a siege of Baghdad, should the interim administration get started anyway in the regions of the country outside the capital -- or would that provoke a break-up of Iraq as a unified state?
The military battle of Baghdad has yet to open. The political battle of Baghdad is already under way, and in the capitals of Iraq's neighbors, they talk and scheme of little else.
The gathering of the Independent Iraqis for Democracy (IID) opened this morning. It was attended by participants from around the world, many from the United States, including Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims and Kurds.
The IID consists mainly of liberal, independent figures. Participants at the meeting also included two important religious Shi'ite figures, Mohamed Bahr al Ulum, and Hussein al Sadr.
It is keen to distinguish itself from the mainstream US-backed opposition, which consists of six groups including the Iraqi National Congress (INC) of Ahmed Chalabi and the two main Kurdish parties.
New Petition: Transform Iraq into beacon Albert Yelda, an Assyrian Christian with influence over more than 1.5 million Iraqi Christians, including Assyrians and Chaldeans. Yelda, cofounder of the Iraqi National Congress, split off from the Moslem-dominated group in 1999 to form the Iraqi National Coalition. He has been part of the Iraqi opposition since 1973, while living in Iraq.
The Bush administration must understand the need for a government not controlled by any one religion, like elsewhere in the Middle East. To promote and groom only Shi'ite groups, such as the "supreme council of Islamic revolution in Iraq," Iraqi communists and "ex" Baath party members to key positions in the post-Saddam government is a mistake. Members of such groups are today in Washington D.C. Pro-democracy figures of the Iraqi opposition must not be ignored.
USATODAY.com - Ex-Iraq officers discuss ousting Saddam Albert Yelda, co-founder of the Iraqi National Coalition, said the meeting would be the largest gathering ever of exiled Iraqi officers. He said they hope to unify those in exile and still inside Iraq in "establishing a democratic regime where the Iraqis, Assyrians, Christians, Muslims, Arabs, Kurds and Turkomans can live peacefully and equally."
Professorial Pundits Place Iraq Bets No one reasonably expects professors of Middle Eastern studies to predict military outcomes. But political outcomes, especially in the long term, are supposed to be their forte. And so here, for the record, are the predictions of four chaired professors of Middle Eastern studies, at leading American universities. At the end of the day, events will prove two of them right, and two of them wrong.
Iraqi immigrants gung ho on war They danced in the aisles when Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz showed up in Dearborn to address them last month.
Democratic Imperialism: A Blueprint only a democratic transformation of Iraq, and eventually of the larger Arab world, can provide long-term security against terrorism and nuclear attack.
....Some elements of the Bush administration prefer to work through traditional Arab elites, while others remain intent on relatively rapid democratization.
If the Iraqi returnees turn out to be poor democratizers, or if America finds it difficult to exercise great and lasting influence without quite seeming to do so, the chances of an Arab nationalist reaction or internal American divisions are high. Certainly, one reasonable response to this scenario is refusal to engage in a long-term occupation at all.
Rage, Hubris, and Regime Change The remarkably successful reconstruction of Germany took place in the context of a Germany that, prior to Nazism, had constitutional, juridical, and even political elements consistent with liberal capitalist democracy.
As for Japan, it took four years of war, two nuclear devices, a thoroughly devastated Japanese economy and society, the consequent discrediting of the emperor-centered militaristic polity, a Japanese culture built on hierarchical organization and obedience, and, as John W. Dower notes in his magisterial work on the Occupation, a country accustomed to the imposition of foreign models - the Meiji experience being a major example, one that occurred within the lifetime of some Japanese - to offer itself as a candidate for democratic transformation.
Creating a civil society and democratic government will take a miracle.
'Nuf said.
We are told that Army Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, one of two deputy commanders of U.S. Central Command, will likely be the top U.S. military officer in post-war Iraq.
The Arabic-speaking West Point graduate would essentially run the country while the United States maintained order and then slowly handed off power to Iraqi citizens.
ALSO:
Clintonized CIA Snubs Key Iraqi Dissident Group The decision to marginalize the Iraqi National Congress, carried forward into the Bush-era under Clinton appointed CIA Director George Tenet, is making the task of liberation more difficult, the Wall Street Journal said Monday, by complicating efforts of U.S. forces to gain the trust of the Iraqi people.
The Iraqi National Congress is the only opposition movement that can count among its members significant numbers of Kurds, Arabs, Sunni Muslims and Shiites, the paper adds. The INC happens also to be the only dissident group that has had any military success against Saddam.
"The CIA and State may be hopeless as they try to protect their past misjudgments," the paper concludes.
Just how we handle this.......Who is put in charge........Their own sensibilities and training.......will all be important for the success of Step 2. I'm sure the military is looking back at what was done right (and wrong) in both Japan and Germany by the military 'Viceroys' of the time who sheperded these defeated totalitarian societies back into the world community.
Whether the world or Islam likes it or not, there will be military rule for a period of time before civilian groups are given the reins. How long this takes is anyones guess and depends also on the feelings of the survivors in Iraq. They HAD a country previously............and pissed it away through coups, assassinations and general instability that left a vacumn eventually filled by Saddam Insane.
Maybe they'll learn from their mistakes. Maybe not; 60 Minutes Sunday night had an interview with some smiling Imam in exile in Iran who wants to come back immediately to "tend to his flock". He looked like a rabble-rouser to me.
Whether the world or Islam likes it or not - the U.S. should export the melting-pot culture to Iraq to avoid more coups, assassinations and general instability that will leave another vacumn to be eventually filled by another Saddam Insane, who could be some smiling Imam in exile in Iran who wants to come back immediately to "tend to his flock".
Maybe they'll learn from their mistakes.
It's up to U.S. to ensure that they do.
I couldn't have modified it better myself. ***LOL***
In fact, this IS my retort to letfists:
We are NOT a 'multicultural' society.
We already have a culture that works quite well, thank you.
We ARE, however, a 'multiethnic' society of individuals who have, of their own free will, come together to live in the SAME culture.
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