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United States Must Not Shape Iraq’s Reconstruction
As Democratic activists and friends of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, we read with dismay a statement imputed to her calling for more troops to bring stability to Iraq. We strongly disagree. The U.S. is sinking into a quagmire in Iraq. We cannot get out of this quagmire by going deeper into it. That reasoning led to our debacle in Vietnam. As in Vietnam, a U.S. administration has underestimated the power of nationalism. In a country where a people feel their sovereignty is being violated, greater intervention by a foreign occupier only deepens hostility and national resistance.
While we recognize the need to safeguard our troops and our responsibility to bring greater security to the Iraqi people, increasing American military power without a fundamental change in US objectives will accomplish neither of these ends. We do have a responsibility to help the Iraqis get back on their feet. But unless there is a significant change in US thinking about Iraq, we are headed for a tragedy of monumental proportions.
We Have to Bring in the UN
While many Iraqi’s welcomed the fall of Saddam, they almost universally question our nation’s motives. And who can blame them? This war was instigated by an administration that lied and manipulated evidence to cloak its real motives. The U.S. will not to be able to impose its model for Iraq upon a people who distrust its intentions. More military force, under these circumstances, will backfire. It will strengthen the hand of those who are most hostile to us, making them look like the staunchest supporters of Iraqi sovereignty.
We must bring in the United Nations. We must abandon the illusion that the U.S. can determine the final shape of Iraqi reconstruction. We must to begin to reduce our role as an occupying power, and enlist the help of the international community. Iraq needs an interim authority that can create an atmosphere of trust by convincing the Iraqi people that it truly recognizes they hold their destiny in their own hands. Only the United Nations stands a chance of brokering peaceful negotiations between the different Iraqi communities.
The deepening crisis in Iraq is driven by a U.S. administration that learned nothing from history; that believes it can impose a national model that serves its own geopolitical agenda rather than something confirming Iraq’s particular historical trajectory. We must abandon any illusion that the U.S. can determine the final shape of Iraqi reconstruction. That is the path to quagmire.
The way out is not for us to go further in, but to bring in those whom the Iraqis will trust to help them find their way forward—those whom the Bush administration sought to leave out.
Vicki Cosgrove and Matthew Hallinan are co-chairs of the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club.