The aftermath of the Iraq War has shown us that good soldiers are not always good cops. They cannot replace a professional international police force able to rapidly deploy and reestablish the rule of law in post-conflict hot spots. Most Iraqis would tell you the world needs such a force right now. The United Nations should be tasked with making this a reality.
When all three major U.S. newsweeklies–Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report–run major features on the same day on possible government lying, you can bet you have the makings of a major scandal. And when the two most important outlets of neoconservative opinion–The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal–come out on the same day with lead editorials spluttering outrage about suggestions of government lying, you can bet that things are going to get very hot as summer approaches in Washington.
The new world order on display in Iraq places new demands on the U.S. humanitarian community. The Wolfowitz-Perle doctrine of pre-emptive action against perceived external threats preserves a role for humanitarian intervention. In fact, it may make humanitarian response a growth industry. The role of relief organizations in Iraq raises many questions, however, and these questions deserve the continuing attention of the movement that sought to avoid this war in the first place.
The Bush administration is presenting itself to the world as a juggernaut–a “massive, inexorable force that advances irresistibly, crushing whatever is in its path.” Bush’s National Security Strategy portrays his “war against terrorism” as “a global enterprise of uncertain duration.” It says the U.S. will act against “emerging threats before they are fully formed.” The Bush administration envisions the coming decades as a continuation of recent U.S. demands, threats, and wars. It intends to continue the aggressive behavior already illustrated by war on Afghanistan and Iraq, armed intervention in the Philippines and Colombia, and threats against Syria, Iran, and North Korea. The Bush administration and its successors are likely to continue this juggernaut until they are made to stop.
The problem with trying to be reasonable with the neoconservative hawks in the Bush administration is that all too often they take it as surrender. The announcement by key antiwar members of the UN Security Council that they would consider lifting sanctions on Iraq has been taken as total agreement with the U.S. agenda. It is clearly not.
On the eve of the war in Iraq, Pete Du Pont published an essay in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Getting Serious: Questions for the Peaceniks.” Du Pont posed six “familiar” questions “we ought to be asking the peace protesters.” Although Du Pont’s tone is depreciatory and cynical, the challenge to peace advocacy that the questions convey merits serious response, especially in light of the neoconservative exultancy that the disposition of the Iraq war has elicited.
If the unilateralist hawks in the administration of President George W. Bush were hoping that the easier than expected military victory in Iraq would bring the U.S. public closer to their views, they are likely to be very disappointed by the latest public opinion poll. It shows that much of the public appears to be more in tune with the views of “Old Europe”–a moniker applied by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to describe European countries that opposed Washington’s rush to attack Iraq–than with those of the neoconservatives around Rumsfeld.
There has been a disturbing degree of triumphalism following the overthrow–perhaps “evaporation” is a better word–of Saddam Hussein’s regime in the face of invading American forces. Even putting aside the appropriateness of this kind of gloating in the face of such death and destruction–including thousands of civilian casualties–it is striking that few people are asking whether the U.S. or the rest of the world is safer now as a result of this overwhelming American military victory.
Shiite And Sunni Muslims Struggle To Fill Leadership Void In Iraq By Ahmed Rashid | May 2, 2003 Editor : John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center ( IRC ) Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org
As U.S. forces consolidate the occupation in Iraq the neoconservatives are bringing the war home again, re-opening the front in Washington with an artillery barrage against the State Department.