With Hat In Hand

Are we actually seeing signs of humility from Bushco lately? Some indications of their horrendous mistakes that have led to such murderous chaos, particularly in the Middle East?

Well, no, I suppose, but the closest thing to that would be something approximating common sense. Some of that appeared in the following New York Times column today by Zalmay Khalilzad (pictured), the United States ambassador to the United Nations (see, now they tell us that the U.N. should be involved in that mess, when we should have been partnering with them every step of the way).

I just want to add a few thoughts to what Kahlilzad says here – he’s smarter than your typical neocon wingnut so I don’t have much to say, though he’s definitely one of them to be sure…

AFTER meeting with President Bush on Tuesday, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the Iraqi situation is “a problem of the whole world” and that the United Nations is prepared to contribute to the “Iraqi government and people to help them overcome this difficulty.”

The United States recognizes the global importance of stabilizing Iraq and supports this forward-leaning approach to enhancing the United Nations’ role. The United Nations possesses certain comparative advantages for undertaking complex internal and regional mediation efforts; it can also help internationalize the effort to stabilize the country.

All of which is necessary because we chose to act unilater…oh, excuse me, I forgot about the “coalition of the willing” for a minute.

In coming weeks, the United Nations will appoint a new envoy for Iraq and renew the Security Council mandate for its mission in Baghdad. As special envoy and ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, I saw how the United Nations could play an enormously helpful role when represented by talented envoys who are given the right mandate, and when supported by the major powers. In Iraq, the United States supports a larger United Nations role because we believe that with the right envoy and mandate it is the best vehicle to address the two fundamental issues driving the crisis in Iraq.

That’s nice that we like the U.N. again. Maybe we won’t spy on delegates any more to see whether or not they’ll vote in favor of greater involvement in Iraq.

First, the United Nations has unmatched convening power that can help Iraq’s principal communities reach a national compact on the distribution of political and economic power. In the role of mediator, it has inherent legitimacy and the flexibility to talk to all parties, including elements outside the political process.

A new United Nations envoy should have a mandate to help Iraqis complete work on a range of issues: the law governing distribution of hydrocarbon revenues, the reform of the de-Baathification law, the review of the Constitution, the plan for demobilization of militias, an agreement for insurgents to give up their armed struggle. The envoy should be empowered to help resolve the status of Kirkuk and disputed internal boundaries and to prepare and monitor provincial elections. Also, the mandate should make it possible for the United Nations to explore potential third-party guarantees that may be needed to induce Iraqi factions to reconcile.

Putting aside the “blue sky” language in the preceding paragraph, I just want to point out that “de-Baathification” was something mandated by Paul Bremer, the first “viceroy” of Iraq (as noted here), but then we seemed to put it on hold to win support of the Sunnis as part of embedding our troops amidst “the surge,” but now it seems to be back “in vogue” again.

In this role, the United Nations has an added advantage by virtue of its role as co-leader with the Iraqi government of the International Compact for Iraq, an agreement that commits Iraq’s leaders to key political steps and policy reforms in exchange for economic and other support from the international community. The influence that the United Nations has over the release of any assistance will give its envoy significant leverage to encourage compromises among Iraqi leaders.

For a little while now, Bushco’s strategy has been to involve the U.N. in Iraq more and more – that actually was the pretext for the whole business with Wolfowitz and Shaha Riza of the World Bank coming over to the State Department, though much of our corporate media in its laziness refused to dig deeper and find that out (though David E. Sanger of the New York Times did just that - kind of buried a bit on this post). I think it makes sense to involve the U.N. to a greater degree, but in its typical sneakiness and dishonesty, Bushco refuses to acknowledge that they’re doing that.

Second, the United Nations is also uniquely suited to work out a regional framework to stabilize Iraq. Several of Iraq’s neighbors — not only Syria and Iran but also some friends of the United States — are pursuing destabilizing policies. The United States supports a new mandate that creates a United Nations-led multilateral diplomatic process to contain the regional competition that is adding fuel to the fire of Iraq’s internal conflict.

Khalilzad is being polite and not mentioning the fact that Turkey has about 140,000 troops stationed on the border of Northern Iraq, as noted here.

This process should build on the work of the expanded neighbors conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in May, where regional powers, as well as members of the Security Council and the eight industrialized nations, began a dialogue on Iraq and established a set of working groups on security, energy and refugees. Going forward, this dialogue should be institutionalized at the ministerial level under the leadership of the secretary general. Also, the United Nations envoy for Iraq should convene a contact group at the subministerial level that will meet regularly to determine whether specific agreements are being carried out.

This language of administrative gobbledygook is all over the place in “State of Denial” by Bob Woodward, by the way; all of these groups, subgroups, working groups etc. are useless unless the right direction is coming from the top.

To do this work, the United Nations will need additional political, financial, logistical and security support from states with interests in the region. In addition, the coalition will need to maintain forces in Iraq to build on the initial positive security results of our new strategy in Iraq, and to work with the United Nations to ensure that the coalition’s military strategy supports the internal and regional mediation efforts. The United States recognizes its responsibilities and is prepared to do its part.

Read “the coalition will need to maintain forces in Iraq to build on the initial positive security results of our new strategy in Iraq” to mean that Bushco has no intention whatsoever to start drawing down our forces, by the way.

While reasonable people can differ on whether the coalition should have intervened against Saddam Hussein’s regime, it is clear at this point that the future of Iraq will have a profound effect on the region and, in turn, on peace and stability in the world. The United States endorses Mr. Ban’s call for an expanded United Nations role in Iraq to help Iraq become a peaceful, stable country — one that will be a responsible partner in the international community and a force for moderation in the region.

What an inadvertent admission of guilt, by the way, for Khalilzad to still acknowledge the disagreement over the fundamental reason for our pre-emptive war.

And by the way, as long as we’re talking about the U.N., Kevin Ferris of the Inquirer bashed the U.N. Human Rights Council today since it has been in existence for approximately one year (here).

Though Ferris engaged in his typical baiting language and acknowledged his freeper pals everywhere he could, I have to grudgingly admit that he has a point – the council definitely has issues, easy target or no.

However, I want to take note of this excerpt from his screed…

The U.N. can't say it wasn't warned. When John Bolton was U.S. ambassador to the world body and insisted on creating standards for council membership, he was accused of undermining reform and not being diplomatic.

"We want a butterfly," Bolton said. "We're not going to put lipstick on a caterpillar and declare it a success."

As noted here (regarding the U.S. seeking a seat on the council)…

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said the United States concluded that since the council has "fundamental flaws" Washington would skip this year's election and concentrate on other priorities, including the overhaul of U.N. management. But he indicated the United States was also concerned about whether it could win a contested election.

President Bush's administration has been strongly criticized in many countries for invading Iraq and for the U.S. treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison.

Of course, heaven forbid that Ferris would be impolite enough to point that out.

And coming back to the “humility” theme that I started with, it was surprising to see this from Defense Secretary Robert Gates (Rummy would merely have snarled, possibly laughed, and continued to stamp his signature on another condolence letter to a grieving family).

(Drat, I keep forgetting about my pledge yesterday in honor of Dr. Carmona, who, as Surgeon General, was told to mention Dubya three times on every page of his speeches...Impeach Bush - that's three total).