America shows weakness in Iraq by passing the buck to the U.N.
One mystery of the last year in Iraq is that a U.S. occupation that is supposed to midwife democracy has put so little trust in Iraqis. The Bush Administration may be compounding that error now by abdicating decisions about the June 30 transition to Iraqi rule to U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. ...
Perhaps the President knows something about Mr. Brahimi's intentions that the rest of us don't. The U.N. envoy was helpful in brokering Afghanistan's postwar government, though in that case the U.S. clearly had a favorite for president in Hamid Karzai. In Iraq Mr. Brahimi is being assigned the role of de facto Douglas MacArthur.
This includes assailing U.S. military commanders for their tactics in the middle of a battle zone. As Marines fought house-to-house in Fallujah last week, Mr. Brahimi took to the Arab airwaves to declare that "Collective punishments are not acceptable--cannot be acceptable, and to cordon off and besiege a city is not acceptable."
Whose side is Mr. Brahimi on? Fallujah is the base of the Baathist insurgents and foreign fighters who are killing Americans. Only this weekend, insurgents who had fanned out from Ramadi and Fallujah ambushed and killed 10 Marines near the Syria border. Unless Fallujah is cleared out as a terror sanctuary, many more Americans will be ambushed and no Iraqi government will be safe.
The one-sided "cease-fire" in that city, along with Mr. Brahimi's comments, have already sent a signal of weakness that will only embolden our enemies. The fastest way for Mr. Bush to lose support at home would be if Americans see their soldiers restrained from doing what it takes to win by U.N. statements or political control. That's when his own base begins to walk.
We also doubt the political benefits of this U.N. intervention. The point seems to be to distance any transition government from the taint of U.S. occupation--never mind that any government will still depend on 135,000 American troops for security. And never mind that Mr. Brahimi, a Sunni who ran the Arab League when it was cozy with Saddam Hussein, may not have any more credibility with Iraq's Shiite majority than L. Paul Bremer.
