Artículo de Thomas L. Friedman en “The
New York Times” del 31.08.2003
CON UN MUY BREVE COMENTARIO INTERCALADO:
"TAKE-OFF WITH THREE LEGS".
El formateado es mío (L.B.-B.)
No one can say with any certainty who
was behind the bombings at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and the Shiite holy
place in Najaf, but here is what you can say about them: They are incredibly
sick and incredibly smart.
With one bomb at the U.N. office, they sent a warning
to every country that is considering joining the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq:
Even the U.N. is not safe here, so your troops surely won't be. They also
stoked some vicious finger-pointing within the Western alliance. And with the
bomb Friday in Najaf, they may have threatened the most pleasant surprise about
post-Saddam Hussein Iraq: the absence of bloodletting between the three main
ethnic groups — Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. After the Najaf bombing, Shiites
started blaming Sunnis, and Shiites started blaming each other.
If you think we don't have enough troops in Iraq now —
which we don't — wait and see if the factions there start going at each other.
America would have to bring back the draft to deploy enough troops to separate
the parties. In short, we are at a dangerous moment in Iraq. We cannot let
sectarian violence explode. We cannot go on trying to do this on the cheap. And
we cannot succeed without more Iraqi and allied input.
But the White House and Pentagon have been proceeding
as if it's business as usual. It is no wonder that some of the people closest
to what is happening are no longer sitting quiet. The gutsy Deputy Secretary of
State Richard Armitage, acting on his own, told
reporters last week that the U.S. would consider a new U.N. resolution that
would put U.S. forces in Iraq under U.N. authority — which is the precondition
for key allies to send troops. And Paul Bremer, who oversees Iraq's
reconstruction, told The Washington Post that it was going to cost
"several tens of billions" to rebuild Iraq.
Both men were telling the American people truths that should have come from the
White House.
Our Iraq strategy needs an emergency policy
lobotomy. President Bush needs to shift to a more U.N.-friendly approach, with
more emphasis on the Iraqi Army (the only force that can effectively protect
religious sites in Iraq and separate the parties), and with more input from
Secretary of State Colin Powell and less from the "we know everything and
everyone else is stupid" civilian team running the Pentagon.
There is no question that we would benefit from a new
U.N. mandate that puts U.S. forces in Iraq under a stronger U.N. umbrella. It
would buy us and our Iraqi allies more legitimacy, as well as help, and
legitimacy buys time and time is what this is going to take. "Other
nations are prepared to help, but they do not want to join what is perceived as
an American `occupation,' " Secretary General Kofi Annan told me. "If the forces in Iraq are put under a U.N. mandate,
they can still be commanded by an American, like in Bosnia, but it will be perceived
differently and provide the legitimacy for others to join."
But this will not be a cure-all. Countries are not
exactly lining up to send their troops into harm's way in Iraq. So, the only way we get a big troop increase quickly is for the Pentagon
to reverse its awful decision to disband (and unemploy)
the Iraqi Army — most of whom refused to fight for Saddam in the first place.
We should be going to Iraqi colonels and offering to pay them to rebuild their
units. They can prune out the bad guys.
Also, the hard part of any new U.N. mandate will be
what to do with Mr. Bremer, who, up to now, has done a tough job well. No
serious allies are going to send forces to Iraq just to be under U.S. military
command. They will demand a voice in shaping the political
future of Iraq, which is right now the exclusive role of Mr. Bremer, reporting
to the Pentagon. If the U.N. is brought into the political rebuilding of Iraq,
a way must be found to tightly define its role so that we don't have 15 chefs
in the kitchen. That would make a mess. Maybe the solution is to have the Iraqi
Governing Council spell out to the U.N. what political role it should play —
where it should stop and start.
TAKE-OFF WITH THREE LEGS (L.B.-B.)
Quizá la solución pudiera
consistir en que la ONU perfile, en coordinación con EEUU, una resolución que
concrete el objetivo constituyente y democratizador de la política en Irak, con
un calendario adicional que determine un plazo prudencial para convocar
elecciones de acuerdo con el texto constitucional. El representante de las NNUU
en Irak, junto con Bremer, se encargaría de ir dando los pasos concretos de
realización de dicha resolución.
Durante este período
transicional previo a las elecciones se intentaría que el Consejo iraquí fuera
funcionando con mayor efectividad, nombrara ministros y fuera asumiendo
competencias importantes en seguridad, defensa e inteligencia militar, y
refundación de la Administración pública, así como compartiendo decisiones de
carácter económico.
El proceso global podría
definirse por la noción de equilibrio entre las tres instancias de decisión,
con el Consejo asumiendo un papel cada vez mayor a medida que fuera siendo
posible en cada paso, con un liderazgo fuerte pero menguante por parte de
Bremer, a medida que la autoridad iraquí fuera "despegando", y con
las NNUU asumiendo el papel de definición conjunta de los grandes objetivos y
de control de su cumplimiento, por parte de su representante en Irak (L. B.-B.)
I don't know what Mr. Bush has been doing on his
vacation, but I know what the country has been doing: starting to worry. People
are connecting the dots — the exploding deficit, the absence of allies in Iraq,
the soaring costs of the war and the mounting casualties. People want to stop
hearing about why winning in Iraq is so important and start seeing a strategy
for making it happen at a cost the country can sustain.