Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
A Times Editorial
Our long-term security interests depend on the creation of a broadly representative Iraqi political system that is seen as independent of Washington.
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 9, 2003
Military victory in Iraq will not strengthen our long-term security if the government that replaces Saddam Hussein's regime is unstable, unrepresentative or viewed as a puppet of the United States. President Bush seems to recognize those risks. After meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair this week, the president said the Iraqi people are "plenty capable" of choosing their own leaders, and he promised that the makeup of the next Iraqi government would be determined by Iraqis, not Americans. But daily decisions already being made could undercut that promise. Some ambitious Iraqi exiles did not wait for the end of the war to begin using American help to maneuver for power, and their interests don't necessarily coincide with the broader interests of the Iraqi people.
Blair has pushed the president to give the United Nations a larger role in the governance of postwar Iraq. Again, the president has made broad promises that could be compromised by specific decisions already being made.
The White House recognizes that it is in everyone's interests to give U.N. agencies a lead role in providing humanitarian aid in postwar Iraq. Our government has neither the expertise nor the resources to bear that long-term burden alone, and working through the United Nations can help to repair relationships damaged in the dispute leading up to war.
However, humanitarian aid and government services often overlap. As soon as possible, responsibility for providing water, electricity and other basic services to the Iraqi people should be transferred to a new, indigenous government, not an outside authority.
It is inevitable that some contingent of the U.S. and British troops who win the war will continue to keep the peace during the early days of the transition to a post-Saddam Hussein government. The trick will be to prevent Iraqis with narrow popular support to use those troops as cover for establishing political control before the Iraqi people have a chance to participate in the process.
Millions of Iraqis are waiting to see whether the United States will live up to President Bush's promises. So are millions of people in neighboring Islamic countries and elsewhere around the world.
If our government encourages the establishment of a truly independent, broadly representative government in place of Hussein's tyranny, skeptical Iraqis are likely to embrace the process and anti-American sentiment in the region could dissipate. But some powerful voices within the Bush administration want to maintain full authority over the process. That thinking is short-sighted at best. Only by living up to the noblest purposes of our intervention in Iraq can we consolidate the long-term benefits of military victory.