Iraqi quagmire
A salvo of words rained down at the United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York earlier this week. Accusations abound. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, fresh from his rebuke of the United States' "illegal" invasion of Iraq, took another stab at President George W. Bush, charging the post-war chaos and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse as a "flagrant" disregard of fundamental laws.
Other world leaders also seized the global media stage on Wednesday with a conspicuous trend -- those part of the coalition defended the invasion, those who were not criticized it.
Among the barrage of acrimony -- necessary though it may have been for political grandstanding -- few, if any, provided any real solutions to the present quagmire in Iraq, and nothing but talk ensued against the backdrop of death and suffering.
Thousands of people of various nationalities, including Indonesian, have been lost needlessly, and no respite to the killing seems to be in view as more die each day.
The U.S.-led invasion was deployed under false pretenses. Saddam Hussein's regime was no model of democracy or universal human rights, but the government in Baghdad represented a sovereign state and should not have been subjected to a unilateral act of aggression. Washington also failed to exhaust all possible diplomatic channels before resorting to armed force.
Violence only begets violence, and the streets of Fallujah, Baghdad and Kirkuk reflect this condition.
While we second the accusations made by Kofi Annan -- that the U.S. and Britain, among others, did not have sufficient UN backing to invade Iraq, and thus the aggression was illegal -- we strongly question Annan's reticence in rebuking the attack.
Why did such a categorical outcry come well over a year after the invasion was launched?
Statements highlighting the illegitimacy of the war are welcome, but they do little now for a country on the brink of civil war. From the outset, the secretary-general should have declared to the world that the U.S.-led invasion was illegal and so urged other member states to desist from participation.
Hindsight is a luxury, but one that has cost thousands of lives. Iraq is caught between a rock and a hard place -- civil war on one side, anarchy on the other. Even the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate predicts three gloomy scenarios for Iraq, ranging from tenuous stability to political fragmentation to civil war.
The situation is such that we, despite our disapproval of a foreign occupation force in Iraq, must concede it is best to retain American forces on Iraqi soil at this juncture. In fact, the U.S. should probably increase their forces to restrict the movement of insurgents who are wreaking havoc on American troop lines and inciting fear among Iraqis.
A reduction of U.S. forces would only escalate the violence and give rise to a climate of incessant vengeance that could lead to civil war. The state of war in Iraq would jeopardize the planned January elections and, even if it were held, the legitimacy of the elected government would be questioned. Other nations should be wary of being dragged into this quandary as it stands.
There is only one thing to be done: Washington created this mess, so they should now resolve it under the strict auspices of the UN and maintain a sufficient defensive force in Iraq to guide and guard the nation as it moves toward the elections.
We can no longer allow U.S. forces to be left on their own -- the abuse at Abu Ghraib has taught us this. UN oversight of U.S. troops, meanwhile, would provide a check-and-balance against a recurrence of military abuses and bombings of civilian targets.
Only after the elections and the return of a semblance of stability should neutral multinational aid contingents, also under the UN, be sent in to relieve U.S. forces.
We are under no illusion that Washington would even consider this option, as they have proven too single-mindedly arrogant and will likely continue to rely on coercion to gain sympathy.
Bush's fallacious judgment has dug a grave for foreign policy in the desert; sadly, it mostly holds the lifeless, broken bodies of innocent Iraqis.