Just because terrorists are trying to bomb us out of Iraq, it does not mean that we have to stay there. The time has come to recognise that the policy which sent L Paul Bremer to govern Iraq, with troops and contractors working on a myriad projects around the country, has failed and will continue to fail, at ever greater cost. Coalition forces should not abandon Iraq, but they should withdraw to remote desert garrisons and let Iraqis try to govern themselves.
Both the economic and the political aims of the occupation have proven impossible to achieve. This is not because a waning number of Saddam’s gunmen, and a growing number of Islamist volunteers from Saudi Arabia, Syria and elsewhere, have started a guerrilla war. If they alone were the problem, US and British forces far superior in numbers and skills could cope well enough. What guarantees failure is not even the sad fact that some sabotage and a vast amount of theft are visibly gaining on the reconstruction effort, so that Iraq is regressing in everything from electrical supply to the number of real, paid jobs. Bremer’s remedy-to have US taxpayers send aid faster than Iraqi gangs can steal it-may be rejected by the US Congress in an election year, but at least in theory it could be a solution. Nor does it matter overly that some prominent Iraqis excluded from the Iraq governing council are campaigning against it, while Ahmad al-Kubaisi, “leader of the resistance,” is still being allowed to raise funds in the Gulf, and address “anti-imperialist” rallies in Europe. For that too there are remedies.
But there are no possible remedies for the fundamental cause of failure: most Iraqis simply do not believe that the occupation is benevolent, and therefore refuse to collaborate to make it a success. They do not report guerrillas, saboteurs and thieves unless they are personal enemies. They do nothing to protect the water and electrical supplies on which they themselves depend, let alone oil facilities. They are not helping the troops who are repairing schools and hospitals for their own families. It is therefore sheer fantasy to expect Iraqis to collaborate to establish the structures of a pluralist democracy under US guidance.
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