Attacks Force Retreat From Wide-Ranging Plans for Iraq

[Patto]

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 28, 2003; Page A01


BAGHDAD, Dec. 27 -- The United States has backed away from several of its more ambitious initiatives to transform Iraq's economy, political system and security forces as attacks on U.S. troops have escalated and the timetable for ending the civil occupation has accelerated.

Plans to privatize state-owned businesses -- a key part of a larger Bush administration goal to replace the socialist economy of deposed president Saddam Hussein with a free-market system -- have been dropped over the past few months. So too has a demand that Iraqis write a constitution before a transfer of sovereignty.

With the administration's plans tempered by time and threat, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, and his deputies are now focused on forging compromises with Iraqi leaders and combating a persistent insurgency in order to meet a July 1 deadline to transfer sovereignty to a provisional government.

"There's no question that many of the big-picture items have been pushed down the list or erased completely," said a senior U.S. official involved in Iraq's reconstruction, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Right now, everyone's attention is focused [on] doing what we need to do to hand over sovereignty by next summer."

The new approach, U.S. diplomats said, calls into question the prospects for initiatives touted by conservative strategists to fashion Iraq into a secular, pluralistic, market-driven nation. While the diplomats maintain those goals are still attainable, the senior official said, "ideology has become subordinate to the schedule."

"The Americans are coming to understand that they cannot change everything they want to change in Iraq," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, a senior leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite Muslim political party that is cooperating with the U.S. occupation authority. "They need to let the Iraqi people decide the big issues."

Bremer's plan for Iraqis to write a constitution before he departed had been intended to prevent extremists from dominating the drafting process. U.S. officials acknowledge that risk exists, but said it had been outweighed by the need to end the civil occupation by the summer. The presence of U.S. troops in Iraq will go on longer, military officials have said.

With goodwill toward Americans ebbing fast, Bremer and his lieutenants have also concluded that it does not make sense to cause new social disruptions or antagonize Iraqis allied with the United States. Selling off state-owned factories would lead to thousands of layoffs, which could prompt labor unrest in a country where 60 percent of the population is already unemployed.

www.washingtonpost.com

It looks like the USA are finally waking up to reality. The incredible plan of the neocon ideologues, to form another country according to their principles, seems to be failing.
I am not sure the USA will leave Irak in a better state than how they found it. I think it is very likely that the fundamentalists will come to power as soon as the occupying forces are gone, and if they stay in order to force a US-friendly government upon the Iraqis, then terrorism will grow exponentially. Is there a safe way out for the US and the west?

[Mitteleuropeo]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Patto
[B]It looks like the USA are finally waking up to reality. The incredible plan of the neocon ideologues, to form another country according to their principles, seems to be failing.

* I was just annoyed by reading that they still want to privatize state property. Apart from any consideration about the opportunity of such an action, I do not think that it is up to a foreign Country deciding about internal economical questions of another. In the Iraqi People wants to establish a Communist Government, this should not matter to the US. Trying to influence internal politics shows that the true aim of the War was not defence, but colonialism.

I am not sure the USA will leave Irak in a better state than how they found it.

* I think that it would be difficult to rule worse than Saddam.

I think it is very likely that the fundamentalists will come to power as soon as the occupying forces are gone, and if they stay in order to force a US-friendly government upon the Iraqis, then terrorism will grow exponentially. Is there a safe way out for the US and the west?

* For the West it is simple: let the cowboys alone and, as I read on many walls:

FUCK NATO

[vette67stinger]

......we don't have some European countries on site ready, willing and able to show us how to set up a Democracy.
And yes, whether you like it or not, I maintain strong reservations on the timely withdrawl of US/GB forces.
Your forefathers screwed-up Europe and we cleaned up your mess, your fathers screwed-up the Middle East and again here we are cleaning up your mess.
Even in Kosovo you knocked at our door for help after your "diplomacy" produced a big nothing.
How can anyone in Europe, especially the post-comunists orphans of a defunct dictatorial empire, rise, for the occasion, only to criticize?
Listen to me, please, limit your involvement to the streets and squares of Europe or even the forums of the internet and vent your frustration in the only tangible way you know how.............
........keep talking.
Ciao

[Patto]

Oh great, we have an example of neocon republican fitting all stereotipical traits:

- Superficial knowledge of history, limited only to those areas supporting his narrow views: "The US keeps saving the world"
- The use of slogans rather than articulated sentences, in the style of Bush.
- A black and white view of the world, with "evil ( the opponents of the US) fighting against "good" (the US, of course)
- And, finally, a hang for wishful thinking, or denying of reality, be it the existence of WMD or the success of the occupation of Iraq.


Face it, Iraq has been a failure, it has done the west more bad than good, has divided the alliance and strengthened terrorism.
And slowly, even the neocon ideologues are beginning to realize this fact, changing their plans accordingly.