Aaron VehlingTwo of the Bush administration’s stated goals when it launched Operation Iraqi Freedom were to end the rule of Saddam Hussein and the Baath party and to establish a democratic state in Iraq.
The first has been accomplished, but so far coalition forces have been unable to completely stop the fighting and establish order so the real democracy building can get underway. The United States hasn’t been able to increase oil production because, among other things, people keep blowing up the oil pipelines, the U.N. staff has left Iraq and won’t return until it is safe and one member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council already has been assassinated.
Now, in light of domestic criticism, the Bush administration has decided to ask the world for help, drafting a new U.N. resolution and making peace with estranged allies Germany and France.
Had the administration not taken this positive, though forced, step towards multilateralism, the mission to establish democracy in Iraq surely would have failed.
The truth is that the United States doesn’t have enough troops in Iraq to secure the nation on its own. The current peacekeeping force in Iraq is just 150,000 troops, almost all of them American. It would take 100,000 more to equal the number of troops per inhabitant that NATO used to establish order in Bosnia and more than 375,000 additional troops to equal the number of troops per inhabitant that it took to secure Kosovo.
Both of these occupations are regarded as successful because no peacekeeper has been killed in either country in years.
The United States would have to pull troops from all over the world and call up the rest of its reserves to get a force of that size on the ground in Iraq. Because that never will happen, the United States needs other nations to send in troops to get a force large enough to stabilize Iraq. Then the process of forming a democratic government can begin.
The establishment of a secure democratic government should be of optimal importance to the administration. Without it, the United States loses what could be a close ally in the Middle East in an endeavor that, so far, has made zero progress in the war on terror.
We now know al Qaeda was not in the part of Iraq controlled by Saddam before the invasion, but we know that it is there now, along with other terrorist groups. There also is a chance that Iraq could become another example of the United States helping overthrow a government only to be bitten in the ass, as it were, by the government that took its place.
Oh yeah, it already is.
Some potential hang-ups the United States might face in getting a multilateral force are the issues of the United States monopolizing political and military control of Iraq and the coveted oil and re-building contracts. The United States’ drafted resolution concedes none of these while calling for other nations to lend a hand. It is yet to be seen if other countries will agree to those terms.
A friend of mine once verbalized the anguish of an unfinished endeavor in these terms: “It was all disease, but no baby.”
Right now Iraq is getting the diseases of instability, violence and terrorist infiltration, but is yet to see the development of an infant democracy.
The United States needs help if it intends to deliver that democracy to Iraq. Even if that means relinquishing political control over a new Iraq to the United Nations or giving up some of the oil and rebuilding contracts to firms from other countries.
If it does not, Iraq never will become stable under a democratic government and Operation Iraqi Freedom will have amounted to little more than a self-imposed bullet wound in the foot regarding relations with the Arab world and the war on terror.
Okiror is a senior public relations major and a freelance columnist for The Spectator.
