AUSTIN, Texas -- It is insufficient to stand around saying, "I
told you Iraq would be a disaster." Believe me, saying, "I told you so" is a
satisfaction so sour it will gag you when people, including Americans, are
dying every day.
I think our greatest strength is still pragmatism. OK, this
isn't working, now what? In an effort to be constructive, even in the face
of a developing catastrophe, I have been combing the public prints in an
effort to find something positive to suggest.
There is a general consensus on both the left and right that we
need to get more people over there, take control, and fix the lights and
water, for starters. The more thoughtful advocates in the Do Something
school, including Tom Friedman of The New York Times and David Ignatius of
The Washington Post, favor a broader and more active coalition of
international support, and the legitimacy that would provide. Kofi Annan, a
classy guy, had the grace to say after the bombing of U.N. headquarters in
Baghdad, "The pacification and stabilization of Iraq is so important that
all of us who have the capacity to help should help."
Secretary of State Colin Powell is now asking France, Germany
and Britain to back a resolution in the United Nations that would bring in
more international help. Some of the usual black-helicopter nuts insist,
"But we must still be in control." Since the whole problem is that we're not
in control now, that seems like a silly point. Whatever, in terms of the
command structure -- let's just get some U.N. troops over there. If it takes
more American troops, I suggest we send more American troops, because
letting Iraq degenerate into chaos isn't good for the Iraqis or us.
There seems to be general agreement on a second step, as well --
handing off power to the Iraqis themselves. I wince to report this is
already being called "Iraqification." Trouble is, we seem to be setting
about it back asswards, by creating a national Iraqi council of our
hand-selected choices and now giving some authority to these cabinet-level
types. Wouldn't it make more sense to start at the local level? Why can't
the Iraqis hold mayoral elections and go from there? (I know, they tried to
do it in Najaf in June, but Paul Bremer stepped in and cancelled the
election -- another mistake.)
A mistake we can avoid is Ahmad Chalabai. Chalabai, head of the
exile group the Iraqi National Congress and also a convicted swindler, was
the neo-cons' darling before the war. He is the right-wing's oddest foreign
enthusiasm since the time they took up that dingbat killer Jonas Savimbi in
Angola. Chalabai is widely reported to be the source of much of the
massively bad intelligence the administration relied on concerning weapons
of mass destruction and other subjects. Apparently, no one in the
administration had ever come across the common wisdom about not trusting
exile groups. One would think that Chalabai's untrustworthiness would be
clear to all by now, but there are still a few true believers.
Some in the "I'm trying to be constructive" camp are advocating
the reconstitution of the Iraqi Army on the grounds that much of it did not
fight for Saddam Hussein anyway. That seems to me a more problematic
enterprise. The army was surely the most Baathist of all Hussein's
institutions. Perhaps if one started with the privates and didn't go very
far up, one could avoid the real Baathist thugs.
I found a useful idea buried in a National Review article by
John O'Sullivan, after wading through many paragraphs of silly, tendentious
left-bashing. Boy, does he not get why many of us opposed this war. Anyway,
he presented an idea he said comes from Pamela Hess of UPI: a short-term
public works program, paying young men $5 a day to rebuild infrastructure.
"Given that the devil makes work for idle hands, that would be a security
program as well as an economic program." Sounds smart to me. We're paying
Halliburton $1.7 billion to go in and fix things, but private companies
obviously don't want to send their people into an active war zone. Why not
pay the Iraqis, instead?
With both liberals and conservatives now on the "For Lord's
sake, fix it" side, the biggest impediment to actually doing something is
the Pentagon's "Hey, no problem, everything's going according to plan"
attitude. Donald Rumsfeld is starting to sound like Alfred E. ("What, me
worry?") Neuman. The inability to admit error is a salient characteristic of
this administration, but I'm not interested in apologies or mea culpas --
just get over there and fix it.
If worse comes to worst, we can always follow Sen. George
Aiken's solution for Vietnam, "Declare victory and go home."
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other
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