January 15, 2007
Can the UN rescue Iraq?
The implications of the Bush administration’s new Iraq strategy are still sinking in. Two of the most interesting comments I’ve read recently are from Dan Plesch and Niall Ferguson. Plesch argues, all too persuasively I’m afraid, that the Bush administration is gearing up for a military clash with Iran.
That’s a subject I’ll come back to - probably next week. In the meantime, I want to discuss Ferguson’s argument that the United Nations should take over from the United States in policing Iraq. Coming from a conservative historian, noted for his sympathy with the idea of an "imperial" America and his distrust of international institutions, this is a very striking conclusion. In fact Ferguson himself writes: "I never thought I would see myself write these words, but here goes: Call off the green berets. It’s time to send in the blue helmets."
Well, I guess the debacle in Iraq is causing all sorts of interesting intellectual somersaults. And, as is only to be expected, Ferguson’s gymnastics are particularly elegant.
He makes a fair point when he argues that those people who are essentially arguing for American withdrawal have too often failed to face upto the implications of the kind of civil and regional conflicts that might be unleashed in the wake of an American pull-out. I’d probably plead guilty to that myself.
But in castigating one form of wishful thinking, I think Ferguson then strays into another. It is easy to call for "the UN" to hold the ring. But there is - unfortunately - no standing UN force that can be called upon. The international organisation would have to drum up contributions from its individual members. And who exactly is going to step forward and put their troops into the middle of a raging civil war? Look at how difficult the UN found it to raise a force to police southern Lebanon - and that was after a ceasefire had been called.
The staff at UN headquarters in New York have their own reasons for being deeply wary of further involvement in Iraq. Many are still traumatised by the memory of the terrorist attack that killed 20 of the UN’s top people in Baghdad - including Sergio Vieira di Mello, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
One of the people killed in the Baghdad bombing was a man called Rick Hooper, who was a friend of my wife’s. She and Rick were on the same Middle East studies course at Georgetown University in the early 1990s, and Rick lived down the road from us in Washington. Then, as now, there was much lamentation about America’s failure to train enough Arabists. But Rick was an exception. He was from Idaho and nothing in his background would suggest a career as an international diplomat. But he developed a deep interest in the Arab world - and, unfashionably, he really loved the Arab world. He was also a superb linguist.
Rick worked for several years for the UN in Gaza. But he also had a brilliant political mind and was climbing the UN ladder fast. One of the top people at the UN lamented to me earlier this year: "He was one of the very few people we had who could stay unemotional and really think strategically. We really miss him."
I have little doubt that Rick, like many of the UN staff, would have had deep reservations about the invasion of Iraq. (We hadn’t been in touch with him in the couple of years before he died.) But once the invasion had succeeded, people like Rick Hooper and Sergio Vieira de Mello were prepared to go in and do their best on the behalf of the UN and Iraq.
And they were killed for their efforts. Now the security situation is far worse, than it was in 2003. So why exactly should the UN agree to go back into Iraq?
One of the casualties of the pitiless arrogance of the Zionist-Necons who pull Bush-Blair’s leash is the destroyed credibility of the United Nations in the Middle East.
Even disregarding the words and actions of the likes of John Bolton expressing their total contempt for the concept of the U.N., we have seen the diminution of the role of the U.N. and its public humiliation as a mere tool of the US, but only when it suits them, on many recent occasions: In the resolution against Iraq that US/K wrongly interpreted as the green light to invade Iraq; In the UN’s inability to do anything whilst Tel Aviv was raining bombs on the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon and, most recently, in the doctored resolution against Iran’s legitimate nuclear efforts.
Having completely denuded the institution of credibility and esteem, the Americans (and their admirers like Niall Ferguson) can hardy hope to be pulled out of the quagmire by the U.N. America is finished in the Persian Gulf region and the “surge” will do what surges generally do. It will blow a fuse and cause malfunction and darkness. The “Saigon moment” is indeed brought nearer as a result of Bush’s latest misadventure (cooked up in the AEI) and the diminished and belittled U.N.cannot save face for Washington.
Washington has no legitimate business in the Persian Gulf region, other than support for its own distasteful puppets, propping up what Eisenhower termed the military industrial complex and support for Israel’s continued flouting of international law.
Posted by: Pacifist | January 16th, 2007 at 2:07 pm | Report this comment(The security of oil supplies is an entire red herring, since anybody who is in charge in the oil-producing nations will eagerly sell oil as shown by the actions of both Iran and Iraq in the past.)
The UN had a chance to help. It left after the first attack. Any criticism of the Bush Administration’s estimate of the postwar situation in 2003 should also take into account the UN’s estimate of the situation. It refused US security help, had poor operational security of its own, paid for that mistake, and bailed out. I wouldn’t count on its help now.
It’s convenient to criticize the neoconservatives, but what was your alternative? The European appeasement strategy hasn’t had any great success. Saddam simply ignored 16 different UN directives. America’s negotiations with North Korea and Iran in the 90’s simply yielded lies.
It’s easy for others to criticize the Americans, but really, without the Americans, who would protect the Western world from Islamofascism. Seriously — who? The UN? The European Union? Don’t make me laugh.
Posted by: richmond | January 17th, 2007 at 4:56 am | Report this commentIt’s great to see some proper thinking, as is so often with your blog. Rick Hooper was one of several fine people who died in the bombing of the Baghdad UN HQ. Another was Arthur Helton, whose skills as a specialist in refugee issues are needed now more than ever as are, according to an UNHCR estimate, about 3.5m diplaced Iraqis.
A UN force is implausible for the reasons you outline. Another option - mentioned, for example by Alistair Horne, the author of “A Savage War of Peace” in an interview with Maureen Dowd, is to “get non-Christian [sic] forces in there as quickly as possible”. But who, if not mercenaries, would this be? Turks? Indonesians? Egyptians? Pakistanis? It starts to look even less plausible.
Helene Cooper recently argued (New York Times, 14 Jan) that the best we can hope for in Iraq is a Spanish civil war style conflict - that is, a terrible and very bloody civil war that does not turn into a regional conflict involving nuclear weapons.
The clock is ticking for George W. Bush at $1.2 trillion for this war, and counting.
Posted by: Caspar Henderson | January 17th, 2007 at 11:17 pm | Report this commentMessage to Richmond:
1-) Israel has ignored over 60 UN resolutions. What is your solution to that?
2-) Islamofascism is simply a tag invented by Neo(Nazi)Cons to justify bombing and murdering countless Third World peasants in places like Afghanistan and Iraq (presumably with Iran to follow).
It is Wahington who supported the rise of Saddam’s Ba’ath party and propped him up when he invaded Iran.
It is America who supported the rise of the Taliban (via the US clients in Pakistan) and trained and armed Osama Bin Laden.
No lessons are learned from past mistakes either. Condi Rice swans around the Middle East and allies herself with medieval tyrants in Saudi and the artificial Arab statelets of the Persian Gulf and calls dictators in Egypt and Jordan (another artificial state created by the colonial powers), “responsible leaders”.
Americans should look at their own corrupt, Zionist-dominated polity before they point fingers at others.
P
Posted by: Pacifist | January 18th, 2007 at 2:55 pm | Report this commentMessage to Pacifist:
All you seem to do is point out problems. Everyone understands that there were countless mistakes made by the US/UK “Coalition of the Willing.” The important question now is what can be done to better the situation for the Iraqi people?
Bravo to those engaging in healthy discussion of possible ways to solve the terrible quagmire in Iraq and limit any further suffering!
Be part of the solution…
G
Posted by: G | January 23rd, 2007 at 12:51 am | Report this commentDear G,
Thanks foir your message. I am afraid that you are making a reference to “mistakes” made by the US/K coalition and use the past tense.
The stoking up of sectarian division and violence was no “mistake”. It was the deliberate “divide and rule” policy of the occupiers.
For example, did anybody ever get a satisfactory resolution to this news item?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KEE20050925&articleId=994
As for the past tense used by people of goodwill like yourself, sadly policies like the “surge” (which really means more killing) and escalation of the hostilities to Iran and Syria are examples of misjudgements that are happening right here, and now.
One interesting observation made by Professor Juan Cole: America is accusing Iran and Syria but is planning to deploy most of its extra troops in the vicinity of the Jordanian border.
It is a tacit admission of the source from which the Jihadis are inflitrating Iraq, except that Jordan is a Satrap kingdom (artificial creation of the Brits, ruled over by a half-English monarch) and it is too embarrassing to admit Condie Rice’s “stable governments” (Read Saudi, Egypt, Jordan and the UAE) are the chief providers of men and money to Al Qaeda and other Jihadis in Iraq.
(Not to speak of, Pakistan, that other “ally in the war against terrorism”, which is fighting the West clandestinely by its harbouring of the Taliban.)
After all, the interests of Israel are that the defiant Iran and Syria should be attacked, not the compliant Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians and the Likudnik-NeoCon alliance in Washington will make sure of that.
Call me cynical, but listen to what I had to say above.
All the best,
P
Posted by: Pacifist | January 23rd, 2007 at 11:01 am | Report this commentWhat is so great about murdering people?no matter what your lame excuse is for doing it-revenge, tradition, in the name of Jehovah, etc. Baloney. Get a life. Be the better person, the better tribe, the better religion, the better country. Let the parents raise their children to have their own lovely children and make happy memories not this disgrace of another human dark age.
Posted by: Gaynor | March 23rd, 2007 at 2:45 pm | Report this comment