June 9 - Whew! After so much news that’s been so bleak for so long, finally, developments over the last several days offer a flicker of hope in Iraq and the Middle East. We’re not talking about the light at the end of the tunnel. Far from it. But at least a few candles are burning in the darkness.
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The best news: the Bush administration has started acting like it understands the real world, the real limits on American power, the real possibilities of international cooperation. And the rest of the world is responding. Yesterday’s passage of the United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq was a model of compromise, not just another exercise in coercion and confrontation. There wasn’t a single dissenting vote. It sure is nice to hear the word “unanimous” again, after so much feckless unilateralism.
More good news: these diplomatic moves can be felt on the ground. The U.S. occupation has been, for most Iraqis, a humiliation, and nothing breeds violence more surely than that. The message from the U.N. is that the humiliation is coming to an end. Iraqis will run their own government, write their own checks, and they at least have to be consulted before American troops go storming through populated areas. Washington kept saying it had good intentions about all these things. France and other members of the Security Council made the Bush administration put those intentions in writing.
Still more good news: The Wall Street Journal reports that a lot of U.S. money that was tied up in grandiose and self-aggrandizing development projects is now being used by military commanders in Iraq to create thousands of new jobs on less ambitious public works. At the same time, the rescue of the Italian and other hostages suggests tactical intelligence is improving, possibly because U.S. and Coalition forces are getting more cooperation from the local population.
The bad news: it took some pretty horrible shock therapy to bring the Bush administration to its senses, and you can’t really be sure how long this moment of lucidity will last.
Washington, you’ll recall, could have had pretty much the same U.N. resolution nine months ago. The French and Germans offered in September to recognize the sovereignty of the U.S.-appointed regime—many of whose members are the same people in the “new” interim government. But Washington dismissed the suggestion as premature. The Bush administration insisted the Iraqis just weren’t ready for that sovereignty stuff.
Then came the bloody month of November, when the insurgency really started to take off and American casualties mounted dramatically. Suddenly, the Bush administration decided the Iraqis actually might be ready for, well, some kind of sovereignty. A grand design for a tightly managed transition was drawn up, with a June 30 deadline. The date stuck, but most of the rest of the grand plan has been discarded or postponed, piece by piece, as the situation in Iraq has grown steadily worse. The killing is now so commonplace it’s just so much background noise on the news. Were you shocked to hear how many people were killed in Mosul and Baqubah yesterday? Did you notice? (At least 13, including one American.) The grotesque revelations of American conduct at Abu Ghraib prison opened a sordid new chapter.
• Dickey: G.I.s Make the Best Of It in Iraq American soldiers in Iraq have been put in the wrong place at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. But like any G.I. Joe in World War II, they’re making the best of a bad situation
So, yes, it’s encouraging that the Bush administration decided it would no longer go around threatening the other members of the Security Council as if they were insolent adolescents. (“Ignore, reward and punish,” was the way national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice summed up her diplomatic strategy at the U.N. last fall.) It was good to see President Bush and French President Jacques Chirac making nice with each other, however stiffly, during the D-Day commemorations. It’s encouraging to see the Iraqi people getting back some of their pride along with a greater share of sovereignty than Washington originally intended to give.
But when you look at this administration and see that, apart from the CIA resignations, everyone responsible for the arrogant, ignorant policies of the last year remains in office, you have to wonder if it’s really made a strategic change in its diplomatic approach to Iraq and the world, or whether it’s just buying time to get it through the November elections. If President Bush squeaks through to another term, will he think he’s got a mandate for more unilateralism, and maybe even more pre-emptive wars?
I fear he might. But for now, never mind. There’s some good news for once. Let’s enjoy it while we can.
