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The Times and Democrat (South Carolina), June 21, 2004
Despite Risk, Iraqis Must Control Iraq
OUR VIEW: Iraqis must control restoration and governance of their country
The United States is counting down the days to the hand-over of power to an interim government in Iraq. Even as our nation is being warned the process is bound to escalate violence, the images from Iraq grow more disturbing. Again in recent days, Americans have seen Iraqis in the street celebrating the deaths of foreigners and burning U.S. flags.
We have noted previously that Americans and our allies have done much good in Iraq. Violence and rebellion are in the news because they are news. Continuing attacks threaten the future of any new government in Iraq and undermine stability in the country. They also make Iraqis forget that life can indeed get better in the long term.
As much as there is need for continued support of our military forces in Iraq, there remains a need to look at what our nation might do differently to hasten stability in the country and a departure of U.S. forces.Antonia Juhasz is a scholar for Foreign Policy In Focus, a network of policy analysts, advocates and activists "committed to making the United States a more responsible global leader and partner." Before dismissing his views as simply anti-administration, the points he makes about Iraq and its future are worthy of note.
Writing for MinutemanMedia.org, Juhasz offers reasons why Iraqis are becoming more ardently anti-American. He notes a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll's findings that a majority of Iraqis want the United States to leave immediately."To understand why, one must look at the daily lives of Iraqis under the occupation," Juhasz writes. Amid continuing military operations and daily attacks and counterattacks, "Iraqis are living in conditions of desperate human need.
"They face severe water and electricity shortages, near non-existent sewage service and dangerously inadequate medical care.
"Water shortages are at crisis levels, leading to widespread outbreaks of cholera, diarrhea, nausea, kidney stones and even death. Baghdad's three sewage-treatment plants are inoperable, allowing the waste from 3.8 million people to flow untreated directly into the Tigris River. What doesn't make it to the Tigris ends up flowing directly on to the streets.
"Electricity is sporadic, at best, regularly fluctuating in Baghdad at three-hour intervals. Iraq's hospitals need water, sewage and electricity to function. They also need the medicines and medical supplies that are in woefully inadequate supply."
Juhasz goes on to make the argument that U.S. reconstruction dollars in Iraq are being misspent through appropriation to President Bush's corporate allies such as Halliburton and Bechtel, with The Associated Press reporting fewer than 1 percent of Iraq's work force is involved with reconstruction.
"While U.S. contractors fumble, Iraqi engineers and workers sit idle," Juhasz says.
We will not agree the administration is mismanaging the reconstruction. We will contend, however, it is time to get Iraqis more involved with rebuilding their country. It's the only way the country can prosper when the U.S. and other foreigners are no longer present in en masse.
Iraq belongs to Iraqis. The risk we took in removing Saddam Hussein was to unleash the forces of an array of ethnic and religious differences that threaten to tear the country apart or push it into civil war. As much a gamble as it is that the country will not become the center of stability the United States and the West would like to see, Juhasz is right about the bottom line: "Iraq must be allowed to determine its own economic and political future.''