MISTAKES HAVE BEEN MADE
Iraqis wonder how U.S. can be so inept
On Aug. 19, when the United Nations building in Baghdad was blown up, a little-known Franco-Egyptian UN worker, Jean-Selim Kanaan, was killed. He had volunteered for Iraq duty to help people, and was counting on the protection of the world's mightiest power.

Two weeks after his arrival in June, he wrote letters to friends around the world. "Americans understand only what is American. . . . [They] made this war for their interests and surely not to liberate the Iraqi people . . . the revolt is growing," he said in the letters.

There are some a series of questions on the streets of Iraq.

How is it possible for the U.S. to make so many mistakes? Does the U.S. want to destroy Iraq or have it plunge into civil war and disintegrate? Is all of this an American conspiracy?

People cannot believe that the U.S., with all its might and capabilities, could not provide basic security after the fall of the Baath regime in April or restore essential services such as electricity and water.

The lawlessness that prevailed after the fall of Baghdad, the looting and destruction of hospitals, museums, public offices and private businesses, while American troops watched, will remain in the minds of many people.

They see what happened as a purposeful dereliction of the occupying power's duty to protect the population. The protection is required of occupying armies by the Geneva Conventions.

To have disbanded the entire Iraqi army and police, leaving the cities and streets undefended, sending home several hundred thousand trained persons without income, is insanity. These and other failures to provide for the people's elementary needs raise questions about U.S. motives.

Many Iraqis see this as a conspiracy to bring about a civil war between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, leading to the breakdown of their country so that the U.S. can take over its oil--the world's second-largest oil reserve.

And as is de rigueur in Middle East matters, Israel is added to the mix, though it has nothing to do with that "made in the U.S." mess.

None of this is the American intention, but there is no way to explain these many mistakes.

The economy

Another astonishing decision recently announced by Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, is the privatization of Iraq's economy. Because there is no private capital in Iraq and the banking system has collapsed, it means that outside capital will own Iraq's future.

Who is to benefit?

The Ahmad Chalabi crowd supported by Deputy Defense Secretaries Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz? Add a layer to the conspiracy.

Last, but not least, is the U.S. failure to bring the worst Baathist criminals to justice--one of the avowed U.S. purposes in going to war in Iraq. None of the Baath leaders held in U.S. custody, some for months, has been brought to trial, and there are no known plans to prosecute them before a legitimate international or national judicial body.

The U.S. even rejects having a United Nations commission gather the evidence, just as one did in Yugoslavia, whose success led to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, which is now prosecuting Slobodan Milosevic.

Meanwhile in Iraq, mass graves are dug out and bodies removed, documents pilfered from public officials, and on the whole, the evidence is being lost. In Baghdad, the word is that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized U.S. intelligence to make deals with the infamous deck of cards of most wanted criminals in exchange for information, particularly about the hitherto undiscovered weapons of mass destruction.

In the U.S., the administration's Iraq occupation policies are mostly questioned from narrow perspectives addressing smaller pieces of the puzzle. The administration avoids those parts of the puzzle that do not fit the image it wants to convey. It also makes it possible to blame security problems in Iraq on "outside terrorists." It does not report the hundreds of Iraqi civilians accidentally killed by American troops. Nor does it account for thousands of civilian detainees.

There is one added allegation not reported extensively in the U.S.

That is the claim of kidnapping and presumed rape of more than 400 women, according to an Arab news agency.

For Iraqi families, there is nothing worse that can befall them. These crimes are committed by Iraqis, but the people blame U.S. forces for the situation. Moreover, when they try to go to the U.S. authorities for help, they are turned away, like the families of the 5,000 detainees who seek news about their loved ones.

The naive impression we are conveying is that our leaders were surprised by Iraqi nationalistic reactions because Iraqis were expected to greet invading American troops as Parisian troops did in 1945. That they didn't see Iraqi opposition coming when common people in the streets of every Arab country could have told them so strains credibility.

These are, after all, brilliant people. If they purposely concealed it and misled the American people, they should be held accountable. And if they were imbued with their own arrogance to such a degree or deceived by their self-selected agents of change in Iraq, such as Chalabi, they should be removed from office for incompetence.

Yet they still impose Chalabi, even when it is now well-established that he has little or no credibility in Iraq.

Not unpredictable

Nothing of what is happening in Iraq was unpredictable. Yet, despite consistent evidence of misguided policies and practices during the occupation, there is no indication of a significant change. We hear of cosmetic changes, such as having a Security Council resolution establish a multinational force under the command and control of the U.S. But that will not delude nor deflect Iraqi resistance, and it will not bring security for the Iraqi people.

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