Diplomatically Skeptical on Iraq

Healthy skepticism about Bush and Rummy's current UN effort is a common theme of the following three articles.

Billmon, whose Weblog is one of the best on the Iraq War gives and excellent breakdown of the major possibilities in the current push for a new UN resolution. Of his four choices on ways to read it, I think this is the most plausible:

The administration remains effectively gridlocked. While Powell has won the battle to the return to the U.N., the neocons ["neoconservative" hawks] continue to hold a veto over exactly what the United States is prepared to offer. And they aren't prepared to offer much of anything -- except puerile rhetoric and increasingly lunatic ideas, like handing Iraq over to Ahmad Chalabi.

At Salon.com, Gary Kamiya takes on the same topic.

And, via Daily Kos, there's William Pfaff in the Boston Globe:

It is less easily understood from those in the opposition who, like the administration, are taking refuge in remedies that have little chance of being adopted, such as placing the occupation under nominal UN authority, with the United States still in charge.

Pfaff also draws on an important lesson of the attack on the UN office in Baghdad. There's no guarantee that the UN would be a more acceptable occupier than Viceroy Jerry Bremer. Many Iraqis and others in the Arab world view the UN as just a front for the Americans. However strange that might seem to Americans, especially Republicans.

- Bruce Miller

Tags: iraq war, jerry bremer