Sunday, June 27, 2004

Handover or takeover in Iraq?

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

The orchestrated violence that has erupted across Iraq's heartland in the days approaching the June 30 transfer of power to the U.S.-appointed interim government is alarming in terms of human suffering and death. It will be even more alarming if it's a sign that the façade of the transfer has grown as transparent to the Iraqis as the pretext for the war has become to many Americans.

Having lost the war's justification on weapons of mass destruction, connections to al-Qaida and homeland self-defense, the remaining justifications are toppling a decidedly dastardly dictator and to "give Iraq back to the Iraqi people." And despite perhaps the best of intentions, that justification may have grown suspect as well, at very least in Iraq and much of the Middle East.

Perhaps Iraq actually has become "the front line in the war on terror," as President Bush said. The stepped-up violence is the work of insurgents coming from other Islamic nations for jihad against the United States.

But emerging may be a specter more fearful for the Bush administration and the thousands of U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq. It is the specter of a legitimate Iraqi resistance; that a government put in power by the U.S. government and held in power only by U.S. military force is as offensive to many Iraqis as U.S. occupation.

Showing that there can be a discernible distinction between the two is the first and most urgent order of business for the administration and the nascent Iraqi government. Otherwise, come Wednesday, the Iraq war may not be ending, but just beginning. If the only government that can stand in Iraq is one sustained by American troops but Iraqis will stand for no government that is supported U.S. troops, the "quagmire" theory has festered into stark reality.

There aren't enough U.S. soldiers to force this version of "democracy" on the Iraqi people if they are unwilling to accept it. Democracy may have a history of being imposed at the point of a gun, but the gun is usually pointed at the despots, not the people.

To fulfill the remaining justification for the war in Iraq, we must allow the Iraqis a government that they -- not we -- are willing to die for.