I picked up The New York Times a few days ago and scanned the headlines. The first one to meet my eye: “Bush Looks to U.N. to Share Burden on Troops in Iraq.”
Those kinds of words made me smile. But the first paragraph of the article started off with this: “President Bush agreed today to begin negotiations in the United Nations Security Council to authorize a multinational force for Iraq but insisted that the troops be placed under American command, according to senior administration officials.”
So basically Bush wants other countries to proffer troops that he will command.
For free.
Now, if there’s no such thing as a free lunch, then there’s certainly no such thing as free troops from other countries. In this case, the price Mr. Bush would have to pay is control over some aspects of rebuilding Iraq. Looking at the history of the United States’ occupation of Iraq (especially in the past three weeks) it becomes obvious that the situation will become only grislier and more difficult. That Mr. Bush even asks the U.N. for troops is a sly admission that our men and women in uniform are simply stretched too thin.
Yet in defiance of common sense, Bush’s new proposal to the Security Council is projected through his typically fractured lens of “pragmatism”. It’s pragmatic in that the proposal will be perfect for his situation: by asking the U.N. for more troops, he can keep his staunchest ally, Joe Taxpayer, from frothing at the mouth due to increased military cost. No more U.S. troops would be needed, other countries would share the burden of occupation, and the United States would remain the primary power-broker until our troops left the country.
Of course, there lies little incentive for other countries to send their troops to a place they didn’t want invaded anyway. They would want a share of the power, and our leaders cannot bear to let any of it go. This just means the Security Council initiative by Bush and Powell will fail, and they’ll find themselves at the drawing board again.
Some would argue that the United States, as the leader and primary fighter of the war, should control all aspects of rebuilding the country. It’s true that the United States did most of the “dirty work.” But it was dirty work a huge part of the world didn’t want done in the first place, and in spite of the fact that we vanquished an evil tyrant we’ve still managed to bog ourselves in a sand trap. With North Korea looming ominously over our shoulder, we have to face fact. We are caught. There are simply not enough troops.
So Mr. Bush is faced with a personal dilemma. He can pump tens of billions more into the military at the alarm of the aforementioned Joe Taxpayer; cede some control of Iraq to the U.N. and allow U.N. forces to help tighten things up; or try to get U.N. forces without ceding any power whatsoever.
Bush’s decision to choose plan C is a failure in logic. If it works, though, he will be a magician we should all applaud. If he fails, it will mean more dilemmas and death.
Perhaps after the measure fails our president will realize that he placed too much planning and thought into the war and not enough on what happens afterward. The war lasted a matter of weeks; we’re going to live with the new Iraq for the rest of our lives. George Bush has his cake. But he should have known he can’t eat all of it, too.