[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 15]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 21272]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               UN CAN PICK UP PIECES IF U.S. WILL LET IT

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                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, September 3, 2003

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker,  upon my return to the 
United States after a week in the Republic of Cape Verde, which is the 
ancestral home of many of my constituents, I was pleased to read that 
the President, in a long overdue move, is seriously thinking about 
significant UN involvement in our administration of Iraq. 
Unfortunately, both past history and the description of current efforts 
fail to give me confidence that the administration is ready to do this 
in the serious way that is required for success.
  The importance of this being done appropriately was recently 
underlined in an extremely cogent article from one of our most 
experienced foreign policy experts. Jonathan Moore is a man who began 
his career working as a key aide to the late Eliot Richardson, himself 
one of the most distinguished and thoughtful practitioners of foreign 
policy in recent history. Jonathan Moore has broad first-hand 
experience in international affairs, and has also been a thoughtful 
scholar. He served America at the UN under President George H.W. Bush, 
and he is now an advisor to the UN Development Program on Post Conflict 
Reconstruction. On Tuesday, August 26, as I was leaving the country, I 
read the attached article by him in the Boston Globe and I was struck 
by how well he put the case. As might already be clear from his having 
begun his work with Eliot Richardson, Jonathan Moore's active political 
career was as a Republican, which is relevant only to refute any 
suggestion that there is even the slightest hint of partisanship in his 
strong critique of the administration.
  Few Americans have earned a right to a hearing on this subject more 
than Jonathan Moore, and I know of no one who has made the case for the 
appropriate policy to be followed in this difficult situation more 
cogently. I ask that Jonathan Moore's incisive article be printed here, 
and I earnestly hope that the administration will heed him.

                 [From the Boston Globe, Aug. 26, 2003]

           UN Can Pick Up Pieces in Iraq if U.S. Will Let It

       In the aftermath of last Tuesday's bombing of United 
     Nations headquarters in Baghdad, the United States finds 
     itself in a terrible bind largely of its own making.
       Following the successful fighting and takeover, the United 
     States held the initiative as it turned to the immediate 
     postwar challenges of occupation: establishing security, 
     tending to humanitarian relief, getting basic public services 
     functioning, and undertaking efforts to build a democratic 
     nation and to begin serious reconstruction. Now the momentum 
     may have shifted against the United States, putting it in a 
     perilous position.
       In all the time building up to the war, the United States 
     insisted on its objective of regime change and its vision of 
     a stable, democratic Iraq exerting a salutary influence on 
     peace and progress in the Middle East. The problem is that 
     the administration did not heed sensible, professional 
     warnings of the inherent dangers and obstacles that would be 
     faced and cautions about the enormous investments that would 
     be required to pull it off. Instead, the administration 
     proceeded by itself in an arrogant and ill-prepared manner.
       While the problems the United States has encountered since 
     the war was declared over could not have been predicted with 
     certainty (and who would have wanted to), some were probable, 
     all were possible, and none, even occurring together, should 
     have come as a surprise.
       Two factors in the current situation are predominant: 
     establishing and maintaining security in Iraq and the role of 
     the United Nations. The United States is in the process of 
     botching both of them, and they are intertwined. The 
     administration has failed to control security in Iraq by 
     underestimating the problem and by refusing to take the 
     measures required to achieve it.
       When the Security Council refused to give the United States 
     carte blanche for both its war-making and its nation-
     building, the administration dismissed the United Nations and 
     proceeded unilaterally. (The ``coalition'' is us. Our biggest 
     and best ally, the British, have 11,000 troops in Iraq 
     compared with our 150,000.)
       Security is the sine qua non. Nothing else in the 
     administration's ambitious agenda can happen without it. Not 
     only does adequate security in Iraq not exist and is 
     diminishing but the United States, in its insistent monopoly, 
     is exclusively responsible for it and therefore for its 
     failure.
       As Washington now casts about for help both in recovering 
     security--with peace-keeping troops from other countries--and 
     in reconstruction--with financing and expertise also from 
     international actors--other nations neither want to 
     participate as U.S. vassals nor are they entirely confident 
     the United States is up to doing a good job.
       Two weeks ago the United States scrapped a possible UN 
     resolution designed to attract such help and provide greater 
     credibility for the whole enterprise because the 
     administration didn't want its own authority to be diluted in 
     either realm.
       We've been there before and should know better, most 
     recently in Afghanistan. We try to do it on the cheap and 
     alone, stubbornly and churlishly. Defense Secretary Donald 
     Rumsfeld, who months ago brutally put down our Army chief of 
     staff for having suggested the need for up to 300,000 troops 
     to secure postwar Iraq, indicated after the bombing of the UN 
     headquarters and amid other security breakdowns that the 
     current level of U.S. troops envoy to Iraq chided the Iraqis 
     to exert more authority over the situation. This won't work.
       Perhaps a strategy would be for the United States first to 
     deploy substantially more troops to Iraq and also support a 
     new Security Council resolution reconfirming coalition 
     authority for the security job but switching principal 
     responsibility to the UN for the reconstruction job--a dual 
     model somewhat similar to the one used in Afghanistan.
       This would allow the United States to do what it can do 
     best and the UN to do what it can do best. The United States 
     would still exercise enormous influence in the nation-
     building arena but with more international involvement in 
     money, experience, and political capital. There would be 
     greater credibility and broad acceptance for such an 
     arrangement, more sharing of credit and blame (the United 
     States would not be exclusively exposed and targeted), and 
     such a regime would be likely to attract more troop 
     contributions to the United States-led security effort.
       The administration would still face huge odds. But it would 
     strengthen the prospect and improvement is desperately 
     needed. The United States can't go it alone, and it must not 
     go down and out in Iraq.

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