The Government of Free Iraq
BABBIN, JED L.
The Government of Free Iraq It's in London—for now. BY JED L. BABBIN London WHATEVER the U.N. semioti-cians find in Saddam's December 8 "disclosure," it won't be the truth. As Defense Secretary...
...The December 8 report brings to an end the latest round of inspections, debates, and denials and makes military action inevitable...
...American troops, he says, should "foster and guarantee" the building of the Iraqi democracy, and help rebuild its defense forces...
...This should not mean an open-ended American military presence or, worse yet, an American military government in Iraq...
...Germany, whose high tech companies are supplying Saddam with technology even now, will want to keep the business going...
...In the INC's London headquarters on Thanksgiving Day, Chalabi told me, "We broke politics open in Iraq, away from political oligarchs organizing themselves in secret meetings...
...And when it comes to participating in the new oil supplies opened by a free Iraq, we cannot be shy about reminding the new Iraqi government by whose grace Iraq is made free...
...It took postwar Germany six years to form a stable government...
...Today, there are fewer than 1,000, hardly the broad base a theocratic takeover would need to succeed...
...We need to work even harder to prevent them from imposing in Iraq the kind of anti-American trade policies that the European Union now proclaims proudly...
...In the first few hours of the campaign, we will destroy Saddam's command and control assets, disrupting his ability to command what few troops may fight...
...On December 2, President Bush appointed of one of Chalabi's friends, Zalmay Khalilzad, as "special envoy and ambassador-at-large for free Iraqis...
...The war should succeed in a week or ten days, and end without the destruction of Jed L. Babbin, a deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration, is a frequent commentator on the Fox News Channel and MSNBC...
...There is no reason to believe that our military will fail to remove Saddam if the president orders it...
...The Russians are owed about $8 billion by Saddam, and the French are dependent on Iraqi oil...
...Three years later, when Saddam attacked the free Iraqis and Kurds in northern Iraq, the Clinton administration stood by while they were slaughtered...
...The Kurds of northern Iraq could form a separate Kurdish state...
...But it cannot shape the peace...
...That task—which is, heaven help us, for the diplomats— will be more complex for two reasons...
...It's on the letterhead of the Vice President of the United States and signed by Al Gore...
...O. Faruk Logoglu told me, President Bush has promised Turkey that Iraq will not be partitioned...
...When I asked him how the French and Russians would be influencing a new government, he smiled and said that the Iraqi opposition is "conscious" of those deals...
...The most likely person to be the next Iraqi leader is Ahmad Chalabi, president of the Iraqi National Congress...
...Chalabi wants American involvement in postwar reconstruction...
...Moreover, as Turkish ambassador Dr...
...If he is chosen to lead a new, free Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi seems unlikely to forget...
...But Germany, for all its weakness, did not have Hitler's trading partners to deal with...
...Worst of all, Iraq could fall under a radical theocracy if Iran chooses to intervene...
...Chalabi is quite open about his love-hate relationship with the Clinton White House and the State Department...
...First, the disunity of the many Iraqi ethnic groups makes formation of a new government difficult...
...Khalilzad, also a friend of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, worked for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and had considerable direct contact with the president...
...He said, "We have fought Saddam, and then we were hit below the belt by the United States...
...Chalabi has been working for ten years, frequently at odds with our State Department, to unify the opposition and position himself to be the next president of Iraq...
...Our job is to ensure that free Iraqis choose democracy, not instability...
...Concentrations of air power and special forces will aim to capture or destroy his Scud missile batteries and deployed weapons of mass destruction before they can be used...
...As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said, we know Saddam has chemical and biological weapons, and is single-minded in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons...
...Chalabi is probably right about Iran and the mullahs, but he is cagey about the rest...
...Conservatives recoil at the Clintonoid concept of nation-building...
...The British report on Saddam's crimes and human rights abuses says that between 3 million and 4 million Iraqis—about 15 percent of the population—have fled...
...We should promote democracy and freedom for Iraq, and not be shy about promoting them along the lines of the American model...
...Khalilzad's appointment can only be good news for Chalabi and the INC...
...Chalabi's weakness seems to be his optimism about how quickly a new government can be formed...
...Because his access to Rice—and, at least indirectly, to the president—will continue, his ideas on how Iraq's new government should be shaped will be heard...
...Iraq's oil production facilities...
...Second, the gaggle of "allies" that refuse to send soldiers to fight will spare no effort to position their shopkeepers to profit from the results of our sacrifice...
...He points out that in 1979 there were about 63,000 mullahs preaching in Iraq...
...He believes parliamentary democracy can succeed quickly in Iraq, and rejects the idea of a confessional government...
...Afterward, the task of rebuilding Iraqi society will be enormous, given the damage Saddam has done and the possible competition among ethnic and religious groups...
...That lack of understanding may soon be moot...
...Our military action is being planned to minimize damage to Iraq's economy...
...He dismisses the idea of Iranian invasion or the possibility of a theocratic regime taking over...
...It says, among other things, "I assure you that we will not turn our backs on the Kurds or the other Iraqi communities subjected to the repression of Saddam Hussein's regime...
...Iraq's new government, he insists, can be a parliamentary democracy and need not suffer the disunity that the Afghans still do...
...When they do, they could force Iraq into a "confessional" government in which each ethnic or religious group is represented in proportion to its percentage of the population...
...He gave me a copy of a letter to him, dated August 4, 1993...
...The INC is an umbrella group for the pro-American Iraqi opposition...
...But we can't fail the free Iraqis— and ourselves—by simply watching while the new government is formed...
...Chalabi is only slightly less negative about the present State Department...
...With the interference of Germany, France, and Russia, Iraq will face more complications than Chalabi is willing to admit...
...He believes that 25,000 to 50,000 American troops should stay to protect Iraqis' ability to hold a free election and establish a parliamentary democracy...
...Iraq will not be destroyed as Germany was...
...They want to treat me like an oligarch, and I am not one," he said...
...These "allies" of ours will work hard to influence the formation of the new government to protect their investments and contracts...
...Millions, including about 30,000 well-armed Shiites in Iran, are waiting to return...
...In Chalabi's view, the State Department doesn't understand that Iraq is not Afghanistan...
Vol. 8 • December 2002 • No. 14
