[Peace-discuss] What next?

[patton paul]

No Time to Be Smug
The Anti-war Camp Has Been Proved Right on Every Point. Now we Need a
Fast-track Plan for a Peaceful Pullout
by Jonathan Freedland


It's easy to be smug. It's easy to see every new attack against the US or
its allies in Iraq, including yesterday's bomb in Fallujah, as a tragedy,
yes, but also a cruel vindication of the warning the anti-war camp gave
again and again - but which would not be heard. It's tempting, as we watch
the American (and British) effort in Iraq sinking into the bog, to clamber
to the rooftops and shout with a full throat: "We told you so!" Heaven
knows events in "postwar" Iraq have given those of us who opposed the
adventure every reason to feel self-satisfied. The anti-war camp has been
proved right in almost every particular.

Now we know that the grounds on which the war was fought were false:
Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction and Iraq had no link to al-Qaida
(though it has now). We know that the warmakers' predictions for life
after Saddam were just as spectacularly wrong. They thought the invading
troops would, in the words of vice-president Dick Cheney, "be greeted as
liberators", rather than as the target of daily attacks. They thought
that, while the morally repugnant Ba'athist elite would disappear, a
solid, middle-class, "Mesopotamian bureaucracy" would stay at their desks
to run the country: instead the pen-pushers disappeared, leaving only
chaos. And the US planners estimated the cost to the US of rebuilding Iraq
would be a mere $1.7bn, as opposed to the $87bn now sought from Congress.

We know, too, that the Bush administration's arrogance in preparation for
the war's aftermath was immense, its incompetence stunning. It shelved a
long-range state department study, The Future of Iraq, because its
conclusions did not fit the hawks' plans. The war party always knew best.
So it made basic errors - witness the US officials, newly arrived in
Baghdad, searching in vain for several Iraqi ministry buildings, lost
because they had the wrong addresses - and some comic ones, like Donald
Rumsfeld's suggestion that former New York boss Rudy Giuliani become mayor
of Baghdad.

We know all this and cannot be blamed for wanting to wallow in
self-righteousness. As Michael Moore might bellow: "We were right and they
were wrong." That is true, but we cannot leave it there. We have to do
better than that. We have to move on.

For what is going on now, the daily killing of foreign troops, the bombs
hurled at aid agencies and the unending hardship of Iraqis, means more
than settling an argument millions of citizens had with George Bush and
Tony Blair. All the issues that were at stake then - what is right for
Iraqis, the Middle East and the world? - are at stake again now. If you
cared about the war, you have to care about the peace - or lack of it.

It's no good thinking, as some on the left have, that there could be merit
in the US (especially) getting a bloody nose in Iraq. We have to think
about who is administering the punch. Sometimes it will be young patriots,
new to combat, who have signed up for armed resistance against a foreign
occupier. This kind of indigenous insurgency is said to be growing,
gaining grass roots support and, with it, the legitimacy of a popular
movement.

But not all of Iraq's resistance will fit this romantic, maquis image.
Some will be Ba'athist holdouts, Saddamites who once served as henchmen to
a murderous dictator. No progressive should want to see these villains
land a blow on British or American forces. Others, their numbers not yet
established, will be Islamists, some from abroad, who are graduates of the
al-Qaida school of morality. People who can murder UN or Red Cross workers
do not deserve to be viewed as warriors in a heroic anti- imperialist
struggle. No progressive should derive any satisfaction from their
operations, even if their ultimate target is an occupation we opposed from
the start.

Instead we have to look at the likely consequences of this resistance.
Strikes such as Monday's against the Red Cross will only deter other
non-governmental agencies from coming to Iraq, and the only people to
suffer from that will be Iraqis - denied the medical care or food aid they
so badly need. It's possible that success for the guerrillas will bring
the end of the occupation and a moment of national liberation - but it
could just as easily bring violent chaos, civil war, a return to
Saddam-style dictatorship or a fundamentalist theocracy. Surely none of
these is an outcome peace campaigners would wish on the Iraqis.

Those who opposed the war need to start thinking ahead. Some activists are
already doing just that, debating what needs to happen next. The
instinctive slogan is to call for an immediate US and British withdrawal:
Iraq for the Iraqis, now! That sounds appealing - not least to the twitchy
wing of the Republican party, which has seen the latest polls and dreads
the prospect of Bush going into next year's election as the body-bag
candidate, the president who led US troops to their deaths in a
Vietnam-style quagmire (a word which has now entered the US conversation,
via Republican senator and Vietnam vet John McCain).

But it is no position for the anti-war camp. All it would mean is
permission for London and Washington to have trashed Iraq - and then leave
Iraqis to clear up the mess. No, occupiers have responsibilities: once
they take over a country, it is up to them to make sure power and water
work, schools and hospitals function. The Americans and Brits cannot just
cut and run.

Rather they should work out a fast-track plan for a peaceful withdrawal,
handing power over Iraq to Iraqis themselves. Such a plan should have two
elements, both inspired by the recent experience of East Timor. The first,
and most immediate, is to internationalize authority. In place of an
American pro-consul, the country needs to come under a UN mandate. That
would require a loss of face by Washington, letting the likes of France
and Germany in on the action, but the alternative - young American
soldiers remaining a shooting gallery for Iraqi fighters - is surely
worse. Britain and the US should plan a gradual stepping back and eventual
exit, to be replaced by UN-authorized forces. Those could come from a
variety of sources - politically speaking, almost any country you can name
would be less of a provocation than the US military. Perhaps moderate Arab
states, led by the Arab League, might step up to do their bit.

Finally, a war whose golden purpose was said to be the delivery of
democracy to Iraq should start with the basic building block of
self-government: elections. Under outside auspices, a ballot of all Iraqis
should be timetabled as soon as possible to choose the body that will draw
up a constitution for the new Iraq. Transfer of sovereignty would not have
to wait until the new government is in place: the handover from the UN to
Iraqis could be a gradual process, starting right away.

Think of it as the East Timorification of Iraq. Maybe that's not a slogan
for a banner in Hyde Park, but the peace camp has to put its victory in
the last argument behind it - and fight the battle ahead.