[ OUR OPINION ]
Use candor to get
support for Iraq planFACED with dwindling approval ratings in public opinion polls, President Bush has begun a series of speeches through next month leading to a transfer of administrative authority in Iraq to a caretaker government. U.S. troops should remain in Iraq until stability can be achieved. Any retreat prior to that could result in catastrophic civil war, but the president's declining credibility threatens to undermine his resolve. He needs to acknowledge mistakes of the past and temper his rhetoric in order to gain support of his future policies in Iraq.
THE ISSUE
President Bush has announced a five-point plan leading to Iraqi sovereignty and eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops.
In his speech Monday night, Bush said he sent American troops into Iraq "to make Iraqis free" and to confront terrorism, adding that Iraq remains "the central front in the war on terror." Governor Lingle offered her support, saying, "If we are not going to fight terrorism there, we are going to fight it here at home."
Indeed, the president declared from the beginning that he believed that the Sept. 11 terrorists were tied to Saddam Hussein, but no such linkage has been established. While Hussein was brutal to his own people, the terrorism occurring now in Iraq is in response to the U.S. occupation. As we recall, the troops were sent to Iraq primarily to seek and destroy Hussein's weapons of mass destruction -- considered a threat to U.S. security -- but such weapons have not been found.
President Bush's five-point plan in Iraq is sound but daunting. It calls for handing over authority to an interim government on June 30, helping establish security, continuing to rebuild the country's infrastructure, encouraging more international support and moving toward the election of a national assembly early next year. The assembly then will draft a constitution that will form the basis for electing a new government by the end of next year, according to a draft United Nations Security Council resolution proposed by the United States and Britain.
The interim government to take power on June 30 will be chosen by Lakhdar Brahimi, a U.N. envoy. That power, however, cannot be equated with "full sovereignty," Bush's words to describe the caretaker government. Under the proposed U.N. resolution, it would not gain control of Iraq's oil revenues, and Iraqi security forces would remain under American control.
U.S. officials have said American troops would leave Iraq if the interim government requested. That is highly unlikely, as long as the Iraq security forces are unable to stem the ongoing violence. U.S. troops can be expected to remain in Iraq in large numbers for many months, if not years. International forces are not likely to stampede in joining the cause.
Sir Adam Roberts, a British expert on the laws of war, likens the Iraq caretaker government's "sovereignty" to the "independent" republic of Slovakia under pre-World War II German occupation, as described by George F. Kennan in a 1939 report: "In internal matters, it has exactly the same independence as a dog on a leash. As long as the dog trots quietly and cheerfully at his master's side -- and in the same direction -- he is quite free; if he starts out on any tangents of his own, he feels the pull at once." Unfortunately, the United States cannot just yet responsibly drop the leash on Iraq and devote the resources needed to fight the war against international terrorism.
