New York Times, WASHINGTON The announcement of a firm date to create an interim Iraqi government and end the formal U.S. occupation – though not its military presence – promises the Iraqis the sovereignty they have clamored for, and it offers President George W. Bush the political symbol he needed: the beginnings of an exit strategy that he can explain to voters.
But the price of a speedy transfer of power, Bush's own top aides worry, may be a rapid loss of control – control over the drafting of a constitution and over the effort to make democracy flower in a land where it had never been cultivated. Now that Bush himself has redefined America's mission in Iraq – from disarming Saddam Hussein to creating “a free and democratic society” that will be a model for the rest of the Middle East – any plan that grants Iraq its sovereignty before it adopts full-fledged democracy risks derailing that grander mission.
“It's a gamble, a huge gamble,” one of the most senior architects of Bush's campaign to remove Saddam conceded last week. “But it's easy to overestimate the degree of control we have over events now and to underestimate how much we will retain.”
If the plan succeeds, Bush could declare an end to the formal U.S. occupation of Iraq by early summer, just as the presidential campaign heads into its final and decisive stretch.
But American officials expect that tens of thousands of allied troops will remain at the new government's “invitation,” and nobody can predict whether they will still face a violent insurgency. That would make it harder for Bush to describe the transfer of power as an unqualified success.
Aside from its continuing military presence, the United States will continue to flex its financial muscle as it doles out $20 billion in rebuilding aid and oversees billions more in private investment in Iraq. But the combination of an intensifying insurgency and rapidly eroding Iraqi support for the U.S. occupation left Bush few options but to loosen his grip over the nation.
So in the past week, a Bush administration that is loath to admit any doubts about the wisdom of its judgments basically rewrote its strategy.
Administration officials have dismissed critics who suggest that the process might be driven by Bush's electoral needs, taking pains to portray the new approach as having been initiated by Iraqi leaders clamoring for a faster turnover of power. Yet until sometime in the past few weeks, L. Paul Bremer 3rd, the head of the U.S.-led occupation authority, argued internally that the Iraqis were not ready to assume full authority and that turning it over before the basic outlines of Iraqi democracy were established would invite chaos, or worse.
During abruptly scheduled meetings at the White House on Tuesday and Wednesday, Bremer delivered the news that the fractious Iraqi Governing Council was nearing rebellion over the plan to draft a constitution first and to transfer power only after national elections. It was an approach that was straightforward, logical and deeply rooted in the history of the occupations of Japan and Germany – but untenable on the streets of Baghdad.
“The initial idea was essentially a softer version of the MacArthur approach,” one senior official said, referring to how General Douglas MacArthur, who led the seven-year occupation of Japan, prepared the defeated nation's constitution with a pliant, U.S.-installed government.
Bush's original plan was slightly less imperial, calling for the Iraqis themselves to write the constitution. But all the hard questions – whether Iraq will be a secular state or an Islamic one, and how to protect the rights of minorities like the Kurds – would have been closely vetted by the Americans. The new strategy creates a government before the constitution. It turns power over to Iraqi leaders before there are national elections, and perhaps before it is clear that an interim government formed from town meetings or provincial elections has established legitimacy.
Bush's aides insist that even after sovereignty passes to the provisional government, American influence will be strong. The U.S. military will have the heavy firepower. The $20 billion for reconstruction that Congress has approved will still be under U.S. control. The administration will emphasize that U.S. investors will demand independent courts, a secular government and political stability before risking billions reconstructing the Iraqi economy.
But if there are lessons in the occupation so far, they boil down to this: It takes less planning to topple a dictator than to build a democracy.
The invasion of Iraq was largely in the command of the invaders. The building of a democratic government, by definition, is in the hands of the new electorate and subject to disruptions by members of the former ruling party and foreign groups whose campaign of terror has seemed to gain strength each month.
Bush has insisted that it is “inconceivable” that U.S. forces will leave until a stable democracy is established. The question, which no one in the White House will yet answer, is how he will know when that moment has come.
