Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Recent
Stories
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
September
18, 2003
This Approach is Leading
Nowhere
The
Reconstruction of Iraq
By DOMINQUE de VILLEPIN
Iraq has just turned a page of her history, with
the fall of a dictatorship and the hope for a better future.
Yet a tragic cycle of disorder and violence has set in. Attacks
have been proliferating. Fanaticism and hatred have struck everywhere:
the Jordanian embassy, the United Nations, and the Mausoleum
of the Imam Ali in Najaf. We are now facing the real risk of
seeing the continuation of a spiral of failure fuelled by the
lack of a tangible political way forward. This situation is throwing
international organizations in Iraq into disarray and arousing
the anxiety of all those on the ground. The gravest danger is
that of the Iraqi people falling into apathy and despair. Only
an injection of new momentum, supported by the international
community can make it possible to break this deadlock.
* * *
Everyone's responsibility is quite clear.
President Bush has indicated his will
to make overtures, which we welcome. Yet the draft resolution
presented at the Security Council testifies to still-limited
progress in the role allotted to the United Nations. As a result,
we find ourselves in an increasingly paradoxical situation: can
we ask the UN to intervene more broadly on the ground without
giving it the ability to act or the essential security conditions?
Indeed, can the draft resolution be seen as building on what
has already been done? Is it equal to the situation? Is it likely
to curb the forces causing the breakdown in Iraq? We don't think
so.
Far be it from us to play down the scale
of the task and its complexity, or to maintain the illusion that
it's an easy one. But we have one conviction: by continuing on
the current path we run the risk of entering a spiral from which
there is no exit. Time is short. In the wake of the war, the
direct administration of Iraq by coalition forces has aroused,
despite sustained efforts, a persistent malaise among the population.
This has delayed still further the restoration of essential public
services, the rebuilding of infrastructures. The Iraqis' legitimate
expectations have been disappointed.
But another path remains possible: placing
the Iraqi people at the heart of the reconstruction process,
and invoking the responsibility of the international community.
* * *
We all share the same goal: establishing
stability and creating the conditions for rebuilding Iraq. France
is ready to work within the Security Council with the United
States and the other countries on the ground for the benefit
of Iraq. But we must put an end to ambiguity, which would lead
to a failure for the Iraqi people, with the risk of discrediting
the international community. This presumes a radically new approach.
This is all the more important in that
the entire region is under threat. We all realize that the problem
goes beyond Iraq: it's the stability of the Arab and Muslim world
that is at stake. In the Middle East, an exclusively security-oriented
approach is only maintaining the cycle of violence and reprisals
at the risk of destroying political prospects. This approach--let's
be brave enough to say it--is leading nowhere. Far from promoting
stability, it is fanning resentment, incomprehension and frustration.
Everywhere terrorist organizations are taking advantage of the
least sign of weakness to strengthen their presence and fuel
a violence that concerns us all.
* * *
How can we escape from this trap and
create the conditions for stability in Iraq?
First and foremost, let us acknowledge
that the foreign presence itself is a focal point. Regardless
of everyone's goodwill, it crystallizes people's frustrations,
creates a focus for discontent, distorts the political situation:
all the parties involved are determining their stance in relation
to it instead of mobilizing on behalf of Iraq. The reconstruction
effort requires people to work on a clear basis, and thus establishing
a deadline for the ending of the current transition period. That
is the key to any progress. It is important above all to respect
Iraqi national identity, nurtured by thousands of years of history
and source of the country's future stability. Conversely, we
must avoid reinforcing divisions among particular groups or communities.
Iraq is a land of memory. Her attachment
to her traditions and her identity have already led her to reject
the outside control that some have tried to impose. The result,
throughout the last century, was upheavals that profoundly shook
the country. From revolution to coup d'etat, the country has
been unable to find the peace to which it deeply aspires.
Today it is urgent to transfer sovereignty
to the Iraqi people themselves, to allow them to fully shoulder
their responsibilities. Then the different communities will,
I hope, find the strength to work together. Then a step forward
will have been taken towards greater justice: indeed, it is up
to the Iraqis to make the decisions that will affect the future
of their country. But it's also a matter of effectiveness: for
the various Iraqi communities as for neighbouring States, only
the prospect of a sovereign political destiny can nurture hope
and allow the society to rebuild itself.
Does that mean the immediate departure
of coalition forces? Certainly not. Indeed, there are many who
justly stress that such a move would create a vacuum worse than
the current situation. These forces could remain under the command
of the main troop contributor. Should more countries participate?
The main thing, in our view, is not to increase the number of
soldiers on the ground, but to give them a specific UN mandate
for their job--one that has a time limit and requires submitting
regular, detailed reports to the Security Council. In particular,
one of the priorities today is to secure the borders and put
a stop to infiltrations. A redeployment of coalition forces could
be considered, in cooperation with the Iraqis, in order to address
this major risk.
Let us accelerate the training of an
Iraqi national army on the model of what we are doing in Afghanistan.
That requires calling to some extent upon demobilized Iraqi forces,
whose know-how will be indispensable to re-establishing security
in a lasting way. The same thing should be done for the police
force. In the long run, we could achieve a division of responsibilities
more respectful of Iraqi sovereignty and no doubt more effective
as well: external security as a priority for UN forces and domestic
security for the Iraqi authorities.
* * *
In this context, at a time when negotiations
are beginning on a new resolution in New York, we propose the
following sequence:
The present Iraqi institutions, i.e.
the Governing Council and recently appointed ministers, would
be considered by the UN Security Council as the guardians of
Iraqi sovereignty during the transition period. Very soon, perhaps
in a month, an interim Iraqi government could be established
based on these bodies with executive powers progressively transferred
to it, including economic and budgetary activities.
A personal envoy of the UN Secretary-General
would be mandated to organize consultations with existing Iraqi
institutions and the coalition authorities and to muster support
from the States of the region. This envoy would report back to
the Council and propose a timetable for the gradual transfer
of powers to the interim government and the modalities for completing
this political transformation.
This timetable should provide for all
the stages of a constitutional process with the aim of presenting
a draft text by the end of the year. A general election could
be envisioned as soon as possible, by spring 2004.
* * *
In this context, France is ready to assume
all her responsibilities. As soon as Iraqi sovereignty is re-established,
an international conference could be convened to deal with all
the problems linked to the country's reconstruction. It would
aim to re-establish the unity and effectiveness of international
action to assist Iraq. In the area of security, decisions will
have to be made on contributions to the future UN force as well
as the training of the army and police force. Likewise, commitments
will have to be defined concerning economic aid and the modalities
of assistance to be provided to get the Iraqi administration
functioning properly again.
This is what lies behind the proposals
we are bringing to the Security Council. We are doing so in a
spirit of dialogue with the United States and all our other partners.
On Saturday in Geneva we will be meeting the other permanent
members of the Security Council and Secretary-General Kofi Annan,
convinced that the international community can forge its unity
around a demanding and ambitious project.
It is an unprecedented challenge. It
demands that we understand and adapt to the realities on the
ground. It also demands that each one of us forget our past quarrels
and abandon ideological biases. The reconstruction of Iraq is
a shared duty.
Dominique de Villepin is France's Minister of Foreign Affairs. This
essay was originally published in the "Le Monde" newspaper.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|