BBC NEWS: Iraq: Why Bush now wants the UN

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

Iraq: Why Bush now wants the UN

By Paul Reynolds
BBC News Online world affairs correspondent

Despite a recent claim by chief US administrator Paul Bremer that Iraq is "not a country in chaos and Baghdad is not a city in chaos", events suggest otherwise. Mr Bush does not want to get bogged down there.

The presidential election next year is a powerful incentive for the Bush team to consider any proposal that prevents Iraq from becoming a determining campaign issue.

And the influential Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which carries out independent policy studies, has provided a practical reason for Mr Bush to change his policy.

It says basically that the United States does not have enough troops to do the job, especially if it needs to keep a substantial force free for potential action elsewhere. And the Korean peninsula is on everyone's mind these days.

MORE AT: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3076976.stm

[PA-DEM]

1. HMMMM

You think Bush might want some freedom fries with his crow?

[barbaraann]

2. Welcome to DU!

That's a great first post. I can visualize Bush at a fast food drive-up window with a chagrined expression on his face.

:-)

[ixion]

3. there is no way it will NOT be an issue

even with the UN's assistance (which I don't think Bush deserves at all) the issue will still be around, IMHO.

[Beetwasher]

4. International Troops=Cannon Fodder and PR Cover

Nothing more.

[Fleshdancer]

5. I have such mixed feelings about this situation.

This is tough. On one hand, we should have listened to and been a part of the International Community from the very beginning. Americans were so disgustingly childish and ugly to France and Germany and I certainly won't blame them if they told us to f*ck off or atleast rub our noses in our own shit for a while. We would do the same thing if we received the sort of treatment we dished out.

But our troops (the people stuck with the burden of bush&Co's bad decisions) are dying every day over there. It will only get worse for them and if the UN can keep our soldiers alive, then I want them to help.

However, I don't know if I want the UN to be our knight in shining armor if they agree to US conditions that the US remain in charge and Halliburton gets the oil. Adding more people to an already failed situation doesn't seem all that bright.

But my own brother went over there, and I'm lucky he's back now, but he'll have to go back after Christmas. I understand my selfishness when I say this, but I don't want him to have to go back.

But how do I ask someone else to send their brother or sister over there to take the place of my sibling? Either way, my heart is broken.

Like I said...I have mixed feelings.

[Flying_Pig]

9. I have mixed feeling for much...

the same reason, that, and the fact that most of the military are voting Republican. They made their bed..... Having said that, should we blame them for their stupidity, and the fact they've been eating large helpings of propaganda pie? Again, mixed feelings. I remember the Vietnam War though, and the sadness at so many deaths, caused by the decisions of our political leaders, not the soldiers. We're seeing "instant replay". Bring em' home....

[Kolesar]

10. Please don't say the military are republican

The enlisted are largely young people from families of slender means. Further, they have not lived long enough to form their opinions, so don't condemn the ones who are republican.

However, the officer corps is way conservative and have way too much influence in our society. (Notice which one of the two groups actually does the fighting and risks death or mutilation?)

[htuttle]

13. Unfortunately, I don't think the UN will be much help anyway

Who can possibly send the amount of troops Bush needs to institute order (on his terms)?

France is tied up in Africa on Peacekeeping missions.
Germany is tied up in Afghanistan.

All told, I don't think the rest of the nations willing to send troops would be able to contribute more than 30,000 total.

Estimates have been that they need many MORE troops over there than there are now. That means that most of the troops that UN peacekeepers might be able to contribute will have to be considered 'additional' troops -- not 'replacements' for US troops.

I tried to do some comparisons with the UN allied forces contributions to the Korean War. I couldn't find any overall statistics, but other than ROK and US forces, I don't think the UN allied forces ever numbered over 50,000. And that was the Korean War -- not a mission to clean up after the bastard son of a spook and a snob.

The only possible countries who could contribute a considerable number of troops would be Russia and China. Russia's military is already busy in Chechnya, and I just can't imagine China getting into this to fish Bush out of the sewer.

Any 'solution' to the strife in Iraq will have to rely on a political process between factions in Iraq. Just the sort of long-term, two-steps-forward-one-step-back process that usually drags on for years. And I just don't see Bush pursuing that.

I wouldn't expect TOO much help from the UN until Bush is out of office.

[truebrit71]

6. Seems that pResident HappyCrack has bitten off more than he can chew??

..I just hope that whomever wins the Dem nominee rubs *'s nose in the brown and smelly...

His own track record of lies and non-truths will damn him...

Hell, the comedy central bit Jon Stewart did a while ago was a good start comparing candidate * with pResident *....

TB

[calimary]

7. What's so appalling about this is

it points out that the MAIN reason the bushies are even half-way interested in being bailed out by the UN, or stopping the carnage for our soldiers over there, is to protect little georgie's election prospects. NOT because our soldiers need to be rescued, or helped, or removed from harm's way. NOT because this war is an abject failure, not because the whole place is a mess because some spoiled, arrogant fratboys ransacked the place (bush must still think he's at a dorm party or something). It's mainly because they're trying to secure his success at the polls.

NOTE: He is NOT running for reelection, since, let's remember, HE WAS NEVER ELECTED TO BEGIN WITH!!!!

[SoCalDem]

8. President "Cut & Run" in action..

He got what he wanted.. Big bucks for his pals, a chance to appear "macho", and evened the score for Poppy... He has no use for the "war" now..That's why he declared it OVER on May 1st.. As far as he's concerned it is over.. The pesky clean-up and the chaos that he created, is of no concern to him..

There is the little "issue" of the election now, and that's where his focus is now..

[Robin Hood]

11. Here's what Richard Perle had to say about the UN.

Its abject failure gave us only anarchy. The world needs order

Richard Perle
Friday March 21, 2003
The Guardian

Saddam Hussein's reign of terror is about to end. He will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony, he will take the UN down with him. Well, not the whole UN. The "good works" part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping bureaucracies will remain, the chatterbox on the Hudson will continue to bleat. What will die is the fantasy of the UN as the foundation of a new world order. As we sift the debris, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions.
As free Iraqis document the quarter-century nightmare of Saddam's rule, let us not forget who held that the moral authority of the international community was enshrined in a plea for more time for inspectors, and who marched against "regime change". In the spirit of postwar reconciliation that diplomats are always eager to engender, we must not reconcile the timid, blighted notion that world order requires us to recoil before rogue states that terrorise their own citizens and menace ours.

A few days ago, Shirley Williams argued on television against a coalition of the willing using force to liberate Iraq. Decent, thoughtful and high-minded, she must surely have been moved into opposition by an argument so convincing that it overpowered the obvious moral case for removing Saddam's regime. For Lady Williams (and many others), the thumb on the scale of judgment about this war is the idea that only the UN security council can legitimise the use of force. It matters not if troops are used only to enforce the UN's own demands. A willing coalition of liberal democracies isn't good enough. If any institution or coalition other than the UN security council uses force, even as a last resort, "anarchy", rather than international law, would prevail, destroying any hope for world order.

This is a dangerously wrong idea that leads inexorably to handing great moral and even existential politico-military decisions, to the likes of Syria, Cameroon, Angola, Russia, China and France. When challenged with the argument that if a policy is right with the approbation of the security council, how can it be wrong just because communist China or Russia or France or a gaggle of minor dictatorships withhold their assent, she fell back on the primacy of "order" versus "anarchy".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,918812,00.html


Someone so incompetent deserves to be either locked up or at least unemployed.

[David__77]

12. NO to U.N. intervention.

There is no need for UN or US occupation. Power must be returned to people of Iraq now. The US and UK must pay the costs of rebuilding Iraq, which will take years. Time to repair the damage that has been done.