Sunday, September 14, 2003

Puzzled
I've been wondering for a while now why in the world Bush has announced his intention to go to the UN to seek some sort of resolution about the reconstruction of Iraq. The answer may have just come to me. Last week, the members of the Arab League, in a move hardly reported at all, accepted the delegate from the new Iraqi "occupation" government to attend a meeting in Cairo. When you think of it, that was a sign of astonishing progress, when everyone from the Guardian to the New York Times to Howard Dean is trying to paint Bush's Iraq after-effort as a "'quagmire" and a "miserable failure". Now maybe going to the UN is a prelude to asking the UN to accept a delegate from the new government to sit in Saddam's government's chair at the General Assembly. What a demonstration that would be to the whole world that things have changed in Baghdad for good and all. Would France and Germany and the other knee-jerk anti-American forces accept such a thing? How could they not, when the Arabs themselves have acknowledged the reality of the new government? At least it wouldn't be a fraud and a preposterous insult to have THIS Iraqi government sit on the Human Rights subcommittee.