Here’s what I notice– not only from Rumsfeld, Hadley, and the rest of the Bushites, but also in the vast preponderance of what passes for public “discussion” among members of the US policy and media elite: In practically all these statements and discussions the “problem” of Iraq is presented overwhlemingly as one that it is the job of Americans to solve, on their own.
Most notable by its absence from this discussion: any mention of the UN having any significant role to play.
(I’m still not sure whether the Baker-Hamilton report will even mention the UN– no word yet of its doing so, which means any mention there is likely quite tangential. We’ll know for sure on Wednesday.)
One very welcome item of news today is that the White House has now decided not to try to renew John Bolton’s term as ambassador there… That, however, is only the very start of the massive re-organization of US-UN relations that needs to take place. And it needs to take place now, as an integral part of the attempt to find a “least-bad” outcome for Iraqis q in conjunction with an orderly– or let’s say non-chaotic– US exit from Iraq.
Back on Nov. 10, when I sketched out my best, considered suggestion for what needs to be done regarding Iraq (a.k.a. the ‘Namibia Plan’), I wrote that
- The UN will be necessary to provide a cover of some international legitimacy for whatever the security regime on the ground inside Iraq will be– and to help broker both the intra-Iraqi political compact that needs to be won and the international dimensions of the agreement over the whole transformation of the security situation in the region…
I also wrote that, in the context of planning for an orderly and speedy US withdrawal from Iraq the US urgently needs to engage diplomatically with Iran and with all of Iraq’s other neighbors. The Baker-Hamilton report reportedly is going to make this suggestion. But under what possible auspices can such talks be convened? Here again, the UN is in a unique position to be able to do that convening.
Three final important points on the important topic of US-UN relations:
(1) It’s very unfortunate that, in these crucial weeks for Iraq, the UN is in a possibly lengthy situation of leadership transition. Present Sec-Gen Kofi Annan has already entered his lame duck phase. His term ends December 31, and he has already started going around making the kinds of courtesy public appearances that denote a man who has little power left to wield and little energy left with which to wield it.
Annan did make impassioned references to Iraq’s plight in his recent interview with the BBC. But that cri de coeur was not allied to any policy push to try to reconfigure the UN’s relations with Washington. Indeed, the interview might even have made things worse by ruffling feathers inside an Iraq whose people already harbor a longheld distrust of the UN. (That stems principally from the role the UN was forced to play in enforcing the horrendously lethal sanctions regime from 1991 through 2003… Of course, it was mainly the vindictiveness of the US-UK governments that forced the UN into doing that; but Iraqis’ bitterness towards the UN is no less real, and is certainly a complicating factor.)
Meanwhile, the incoming South Korean Sec-Gen, Ban Ki-Moon, has been keeping an extremely low profile. Probably, that’s appropriate. But it does raise some fears that he might need a long learning curve after he comes into office January 1, before he can start to figure out how to do anything useful in reconfiguring UN-US relations.
Always remembering, of course, that the UN Sec-Gen is never an independent actor. He is, in essence, the servant of the Security Council. So it is the balance of forces on the SC that provides the boundaries of whatever the Sec-Gen is able to do… It takes a wily, well-connected, and self-confident diplomat in the Sec-Gen’s chair to be able to deal with that. No indication yet on whether Mr. Ban has what it takes…
(2) It’s crucial to remember that– back in those dim, distant days when the war in Iraq was still about something for Rumsfeld and Cheney– one of the things it was crucially about was Washington’s very muscular reassertion of its “right” to act unilaterally wherever and whenever it wanted to in the world. So any significant drawdown of US power inside Iraq, such as I have long argued for, will necessarily have to involve a renegotiation of Washington’s relations with the rest of the world; and a renegotiation of the US relationship with the UN will clearly have to be part of that.
Quite simply stated, any negotiated US withdrawal from Iraq, or indeed any significant drawdown of US troops from there that is negotiated, will represent a humiliating end for the Bushites’ whole doctrine of muscular unilateralism. (And quite appropriately so.)
There is no form of orderly withdrawal from Iraq that is not negotiated; and there is no negotiation that I can envisage that would not also, in a major way, involve the UN. Who else does anyone think could convene the needed kinds of mutliple negotiations at both the intra-Iraqi and the region-wide levels? NATO? OSCE? The Charlottesville Gardening Club?
No, only the UN– with all its flaws and failings– has the international legitimacy and global reach that are needed for this job.
(3) The continued self-referentiality of the discussions among US pols and the US commentatoriat, as described above, are a cause for real concern. The fact that so few of these guys (and yes, nearly all of them are “guys”, though a handful of them now come in skin tones of a tasteful brown) are even talking about the UN having any kind of a role in helping to de-escalate and transform the situation in Iraq makes me think they really haven’t yet gotten beyond the traditional assumptions about US superiority in the world.
Public opinion surveys inside the US routinely show that the US public is significantly more internationalist in outlook than most US politicians seem to be. (Though yes, there is always a small-ish lump of the US public that’s determinedly isolationist.) But inside the hot-house politics of Washington, far too many pols, and their pals in the commentatoriat, seem to forget their constituencies and seek to have the US strut across the world stage as though it owns the whole damn’ thing. Inside Washington DC, too, a pro-Israel lobby that determinedly opposes the UN being given any real role in the world and staunchly defends the idea of unilateral military action on its account also has a strong influence on the way US pols and commentators think about the UN and about world affairs in general… (The same lobby that helped the US get into the whole tragic mess in Iraq, indeed.)
So we who seek a sustainable de-escalation in Iraq that involves an orderly withdrawal of US troops from there and the emergence of a capable and legitimate form of government within the country– make that, “within both countries”– do also need to challenge this whole self-referential and hegemonist mindset within Washington, head-on. The US needs the United Nations today, more than ever before, and we US citizens need to understand that our place in the world truly is not that of any kind of “indispensable nation” but of “one nation among many”– and a nation that is, as we all now know, far from being either the most virtuous or the most capable.
Strengthen the UN. Iraq, the US, and the world have no workable alternative. Let’s not avoid the subject any longer.
Bravo, Helena, for pointing out that the UN, were we to take advanatge of it, provides the only possible mechanism for getting out of the Iraq mess without necessarily making things much worse.
Unfortunately, the liklihood of that happening is right up there with the possibility of Bush admitting that he has screwed things up, Bolton playing a constructive role in his last days at the UN, and Colin Powell growing a pair.
The neocon project in the Middle East is in a death spiral, and American leadership, including the self-appointed punditocracy, is determined to ride it right into the final crash.
Its all very well for the chattering classes to hope that the U.S will share the implementation and consequences of its withdrawal from Iraq with the U.N. What of the locals, those pesky “facts on the ground”, oft ignored by Washington. Many had a bitter perspective of the effects of U.N. diplomacy prior the the introduction of American unilateralism. Diverse and fractious as they are, they are there, they have discernible support, they are armed, and most have a much more legitimate claim to priority seating at any discussion presided over anywhere.
Here’s President Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi Foreign Minister and United Iraqi alliance leader Abdul aziz al-Hakim’s rejection of a U.N.meeting in AP plagiarized from, er, as reported at Juan Cole:
“AP also reports that President Jalal Talabani, Foreign Minister Barham Salih, and leader of the United Iraqi Alliance Abdul Aziz al-Hakim have all rejected United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s call for an international conference on Iraq. Talabani said, “We are an independent and a sovereign nation and it is we who decide the fate of the nation . . .”
It is a simple matter, repeatedly and informatively demonstrated, to eject, remove, send packing, expel, scare away, or murder the U.N, ngo’s and national forces out of territories or states where some don’t want them. There doesn’t appear to be any sort of Iraqi state apparatus commensurate to any of the tasks at hand, and there may not be any regime to devolve “security” to.
“Security’ cannot be some draft allowed to pass the unreformed Security Council. Sectarian violence spurs drives to civil geographical homogeneity – cleansing. Government Ministry literally battles with Ministry. A strike on Iran, a tilt to the Sunni’s as bastion against a Shia threat, a spasm of Iranian terror in response – those are the forces more likely than any U.N. conference to influence the outcome in Iraq.
Helena,
No, only the UN– with all its flaws and failings– has the international legitimacy and global reach that are needed for this job.
Yes, when UN has its own rights to make her own decisions without interfering and pressures by US in favour of US Policy makers.
So far we saw UN as staged by US using UN to pass their disastrous and biased resolutions, take a look to 33days Lebanon war and the crime Israelis did, the destructions done in name of one POW solder. In 2003 war occupation of Iraq the UN was handcuffed in addition to the corruptions deep in UN from the head to the rest of their official who were benefiting from the Oil-For-Food Iraq program which itself was inhuman resolutions used to punish 25 millions for 13 years and US official publicly prod of its consequences on ordinary Iraqi as M. Albrights said “Its Worth It” killing 500,000 Iraqi baby and kids, what a crime Helena done by your country and UN.
How dear are you now asking this corrupted beady to deal with the massacre in Iraq what you need from us?
just take you troop out take action now and announce to taking your troops with three months move your military personnel take them off Iraqi cites and withdraw them and leave Iraq to Iraq they already have the worst case in their lives with your troops on the ground, its will not be worst than that, as Annan said to BBC the civil war in Lebanon its not similar now in Iraq its worst than Lebanon case.
To me its like what happing in one of African massacres like Congo you know Helena the number of Iraqi killing each day rise to 500/day not 50 as last month specially after Maliki met with GWB in Jordan what instructions and orders he got by your president, God knows what they talking about. Is it the political setup in Iraq and its legitimates system should Maliki meet his cabinets and inform them what his meeting with GWB and what need to be done to reduce the violence now, isn’t this the way when talking about PM and his cabinet, is this setup by you or its Iraqi setup?
Finally to say please read this and think deep what said in these lines may help you to handover some rights for Iraqis to do and organise their lives after your mess and graveness caused by you….
an element critical for success — Iraqi participation. There has been almost no involvement or incorporation of the views of Iraqis since the beginning of this war, with the exception of those leaders who were hand-picked by the administration.
Independent Iraqi groups and initiatives such as the Progressive Government Plan, the Mecca Declaration, and the Brussels Tribunal have been mostly ignored by the media and policy makers.
These Iraqi-led efforts, prepared by civic and social leaders, call for immediate change in five areas: involvement and sign-off by those most affected by the war — the people of Iraq; complete withdrawal of all foreign troops and military bases; preservation of the integrity of the Iraq state — no partitioning of the country; international funding and participation in reconstruction; and the independent investigation and prosecution of crimes. “
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/692/35963
Helena, the Iranians in Iraq…. look to his face will tell you………
Hadi Farhan Abdullah al-Ameri (alias Abu Hassan al-Ameri) was born in 1954 in Iraq’s key eastern province of Diyala. The relatively short, dark-skinned al-Ameri graduated from Baghdad University in economic management and married a Kurdish emigrant woman in neighbouring Iran’s western Ilam Province.
Al-Ameri was one of the first people to join the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
SCIRI’s ties to Iran date back to 1982, when it was founded in Tehran on the orders of then-Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was tasked with writing the council’s manifesto and the group’s primary goal was to spread Iran’s Islamic revolution to Iraq.
http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9224&keywords=Al-Ameri
http://www.asharqalawsat.com/details.asp?section=1&issue=10209&article=391384&search=%E3%E4%D9%E3%C9%20%C8%CF%D1&state=true
I’ve just read that Bolton won’t be confirmed as the US ambassador to the UN and I could have jumped of joy. I really hated what he did to the UN organizations. That said, what then comes to mind is : Who will replace him ? Are the Bushites capable to nominate a consensual person ? one who will help the UN regain the credibility it has lost ? I’m not sure of it at all, as long as Bush is at the White House there can’t be such a big change.
Concerning Kofi Annan, he was in Geneva lately, preparing for his retirement here and, leaving duty in less than one month, he is not in any position to make a new political move, but at least he tried, calling for an international conference upon Iraq. Asked about what was his biggest regreat, Kofi Annan answered that it was his inability to prevent the invasion of Iraq by the Americans.
Speaking of Iraq, I don’t think the UN can make a comeback there, because, thanks to Mr Bolton et al, the UN is now seen as the arm of the West and in particular of the US. The only way to allow a change of opinion in the Arab public and among Iraqi would be if the UN eventually firmly condemned the US for the illegal invasion and occupation and if the US was sentenced to pay due and generous compensations for all the damages she has done to both Iraq infrastructures and to the private properties of the Iraqi and to support the Iraqi widows and orphans she created. With less than that, how could the Iraqi welcome any UN action ? The NSC can’t at the same time avoid the question of the US/UK responsibility in the invasion of Iraq and that of the compensations due to the Iraqi, while at the same time, the Iraqi are still paying compensations to Kowait for the 1991 invasion. This kind of double standards have to end before the UN can regain any credibility with the Iraqi.
I’m very pessimistic about the scenario of UN helping Iraq back to peace. Immediately after the invasion, the Americans had a chance to accept the involvement of the UN in the organization of the elections and the reconstruction. But they just discarded it arrogantly. Alas, history isn’t like a scientifical experience which you can redo at will. Once opportunities are missed, most of the time you won’t be able to seize them again.
Bolton and the Bushites helped discredit the UN and now that they need it, the Iraqi probably won’t accept it.
National security adviser Stephen Hadley said Sunday that while Bush recognizes something different needs to be done, the president won’t use the recommendations due this week from the Iraq Study Group as political cover for bringing troops home.
“We have not failed in Iraq,” Hadley said as he made the talk show rounds Sunday. “We will fail in Iraq if we pull out our troops before we’re in a position to help the Iraqis succeed.”
Oh yah continue the game forever, massacre Iraqis by your friend Damn Criminal Death Squad Cleric Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, yes he is the Iranian/Iran birth Ayatollah man in Iraq, enjoy the hidden talk between Mullah in Tehran though this mandate Death Squad Cleric Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim he is well representing Iran well done GWB, you don’t like to talk with Iran, well Iran in your office in your OVAL Office…. with fake dressed as Ayatollah “لعنة الله على كل دجال ومجرم”
National security adviser Stephen Hadley said Sunday that while Bush recognizes something different needs to be done, the president won’t use the recommendations due this week from the Iraq Study Group as political cover for bringing troops home.
“We have not failed in Iraq,” Hadley said as he made the talk show rounds Sunday. “We will fail in Iraq if we pull out our troops before we’re in a position to help the Iraqis succeed.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/04/ap/politics/mainD8LQ86HG1.shtml
Oh yah continue the game forever, massacre Iraqis by your friend Damn Criminal Death Squad Cleric Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, yes he is the Iranian/Iran birth Ayatollah man in Iraq, enjoy the hidden talk between Mullah in Tehran though this mandate Death Squad Cleric Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim he is well representing Iran well done GWB, you don’t like to talk with Iran, well Iran in your office in your OVAL Office…. with fake dressed as Ayatollah “لعنة الله على كل دجال ومجرم”
“Al Hakim’s resume is truly impressive. He’s an Ayatollah and a son of an Ayatollah. He speaks fluent Farsi – having spent half his entire life living in exile as an honored guest of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. As a dedicated theocrat – he allied his sectarian legions of Iraqi exiles with the Iranian army in the Iran-Iraq war. It’s safe to assume that he puts his faith based political doctrines above his country – a trait he shares with his host.”
http://www.thousandreasons.org/get_article.php?article_id=342
http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9224&keywords=Al-Ameri
So:
1. The U.S. can’t leave Iraq until someone finds a pony.
2. The U.N. can find the pony.
I say screw it. Forget the pony and get out now.