RE: [Futurework] RE: US not an Empire

[Karen Watters Cole]

Ed, you seem to be describing a respectable and sound version of what Lawry suggested would be necessary, sooner rather than later: a new version of Kissinger’s “peace with honor” that Bush2 will have to craft in order to expunge itself from full responsibility for what has come about in Iraq.     Notice how in today’s “faster” world, this evolution of political risk assessment has transpired much quicker than it did in Vietnam, so much the better to spare innocent civilian if not military lives.   Not six months ago, all the neocons and the Bush2 administration were insisting that the US could do this alone (whether they believed it or not, they insisted in public they could, which they must be held accountable to).  Prior to that, the plans were made upon which they followed their course to discredit the UN and make unilateral plans inevitable.  Empire Lite as long as it doesn’t hurt our numbers in 2004.   Now, there is either another hidden plan afoot of which this is Phase 2 or 3 or else their ill-gotten, self-incriminating discreditation of the UN has now been exposed as too costly in real and political capital, so they are seeking another UN resolution, and ultimate resolution, aka Plan B (or as another FWer wickedly suggested in response to my earlier “shock and awe” Plan A description, replied “shocked and aw, shucks Plan B”).   I believe the neocons will do whatever it takes to coast through the 2004 election and then resume their agenda after reinstalling the dauphin.  Just how they allow the UN to rescue them while looking like they intended this all along is yet to be revealed.  It is up to us, the audience to keep abreast of the script changes and not be fooled again.    - KWC Ed wrote: Lawry: If the US left now, it would be perceived as a demonstration of weakness. All of the militant forces arrayed against what they view as American imperialism would likely have a field day.  America would be on the run, a "paper tiger", as the Chinese used to say.  There would be more destabilizing terrorist acts throughout the Muslim world and in the US itself. Because Iraq may be too big an issue for a single nation, no matter how rich, what the US may have to do is convert it into a multilateral cause. It might do so by arguing, justifiably, that peace in the Middle East and the establishment of a democratic state in Iraq is everybody's business.  To convince other nations to participate, it would have to relinquish many of its powers to the UN and put itself into a subordinate civil, though not necessarily military, role.  The civil costs of rebuilding Iraq will be very high.  Paul Bremer recently came up with estimates of $2 billion for electricity and $16 billion to deliver clean water.  The US will need all of the help it can get. What the media tend to focus on in Iraq are the destructive acts and the factionalism.  What we do not see enough of is that there has been some genuine progress in fixing the country up.  Mohammed Bakir al-Hakim, the senior cleric who died in Najaf, was a moderate with a large following. There are probably ever so many others like him, as was attested to by silencing him.  Most Iraqis, whether Shia, Sunni or Kurd, want peace and certainty, but they feel vulnerable, betrayed and angry because peace and certainty are a distant dream right now.  Begin genuinely giving them some certainty by getting people like Paul Bremer and the Governing Council out from under the shadow of the Pentagon.  Make reconstruction a civil, multinational and participative thing, not something being undertaken by an occupying power that favors its elite firms. The US, aided by other states, will have to maintain a strong military presence in Iraq to combat terror and keep various factions from killing each other.  However, one would hope that progress on the civil side would permit that presence to increasingly fade into the background, as it did in postwar Germany and Japan. Regards, Ed _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework