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Us 51st state { May 4 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/04/opinion/04FRIE.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/04/opinion/04FRIE.html
May 4, 2003
Our New Baby
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
President Bush may have declared the war in Iraq effectively over. But, judging from my own e-mail box — where conservative readers are bombing me for not applauding enough the liberation of Iraq, and liberals for selling out to George Bush — the war over the war still burns on here.
Conservatives now want to use the victory in Iraq to defeat all liberal ideas at home, and to make this war a model for America's relations with the world, while liberals — fearing all that — are still quietly rooting for Mr. Bush to fail.
Friends, whether you like or hate how and why we got into this war, the fact is America — you and I — has assumed responsibility for rebuilding Iraq. We are talking about one of the biggest nation-building projects the U.S. has ever undertaken, the mother of all long hauls. We now have a 51st state of 23 million people. We just adopted a baby called Baghdad — and this is no time for the parents to get a divorce. Because raising that baby, in the neighborhood it lives in, is going to be a mammoth task. If both Republicans and Democrats don't start looking clearly and honestly at what is evolving in Iraq, we're all going to be in trouble.
How so? The pulling down of Saddam's statue was not the fall of the Berlin Wall. Sorry. That statue was pulled down by U.S. troops and a few Iraqi youths. What Iraqis were doing in much larger numbers that day was looting — not because they are criminal in nature, but because the war had left a power vacuum and people were so poor, desperate, hungry and full of rage toward the old regime that they just wanted to grab anything.
We have not fully liberated Iraq yet — we have created the conditions for its liberation. That is still hugely significant. But the feelings of Iraqis right now are a jumble of liberation, hope and gratitude, mixed with anxiety, humiliation, fear of lawlessness, fear of one another, grief for sons killed in the war and suspicion of America. Conservatives, though, are so intent on proving George Bush right and liberals wrong — so the Bush team can drive its radical right agenda at home — they have rushed to impose a single liberation story line on this much more complex reality. Eastern Europe was liberated when the wall came down, because the civil society and democratic roots were already there to fill the void. In Iraq, that order and self-governing civil society will have to be created from scratch. I believe that with enough effort, it can be done, and if it is done, Iraq will be liberated. If it isn't done, Iraq will be a mess.
One senses, though, that liberals so detest Mr. Bush that they refuse to acknowledge the simple good that has come from ending Saddam's tyranny — good for Iraqis and good for America, because it will inhibit other terrorist-supporting regimes. Have no doubt about that. If Democrats' whole analysis of this war is determined by whether or not it helps Mr. Bush, then they are never going to play the role they must play — constructive critics of how we rebuild Iraq.
This is such an important moment in U.S. foreign policy. How people view American power is at stake in the outcome in Iraq, and Democrats can't be missing in action. They have to help shape this moment, and not leave it to the Bush Pentagon. But it won't happen if Democrats are sulking in a corner, just trying to point to everything that is going wrong in Iraq, and not offering their ideas for making it better.
Why should Democrats trust the Bush people to win the peace in Iraq the way they won the war? It is clear the Bush team had no coherent postwar plan in place. This administration, with its deep mistrust for diplomacy and diplomats, may be way too ideological and Pentagon-centric for nation-building. We need alternative voices. What is the Democratic view on the proper role of the U.N. or NATO in rebuilding Iraq? How much emphasis do Democrats believe the U.S. should put into the Arab-Israeli peace process to support peace in Iraq? Is a principled and muscular internationalism now the private property of the Republican Party?
If conservatives exaggerate what has already been accomplished in Iraq, they're going to misread how much more needs to be done and blow the opportunity to meaningfully liberate Iraq. If Democrats underestimate the importance of what has already been accomplished by Saddam's removal, and its huge potential, they are going to miss the opportunity to shape — and help make happen — one of the most important turning points in U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East.
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