If it's good for Arafat - @MidEastTruth

If it's good for Arafat

By David M. Weinberg
April 6, 2003

There is an urgent need to end the bloodshed in Iraq. The cycle of violence must come to a stop. The international press is unanimous: the US cannot continue to use disproportionate force against the duly-elected regime of Saddam Hussein and deny the Iraqi people their legitimate rights.
Occupation is intolerable. It is time for the international community to step in and dictate a road map for peace in Iraq. This is what I suggest:

* Set up a Septet to decree the contours of a solution, without substantially negotiating the matter with any of the involved parties. Announce that this "road map for peace in Iraq" is non-negotiable. Publish this grand map when the politics of the Septet most warrant it; or when Tony Blair most needs it; or when step two, below, occurs whichever comes first.

Members of the Septet might be the US, Britain, France, Russia, the UN and the Iroquoian Indians.

* Pressure Saddam to appoint a prime minister. When this prime minister is appointed from among the coterie of assistants and lackeys that always have been part of Saddam's inner group, declare victory, announce that revolutionary reform has taken place, and proclaim that the regime in Baghdad is now a responsible partner for peace.

* Urge America to show its good faith toward the new Iraqi regime by taking steps aimed at confidence-building. In particular, pressure the US to withdraw its troops from major Iraqi towns and ease up on roadblocks, work permits and visas to America for Iraqis, etc. Disregard the fact that Saddam still holds most reigns of power, holds the purse strings, and maintains direct authority over the 101 security services.

* Work to strengthen the new prime minister by inviting him to Washington to meet President George W. Bush.

* Get the UN to pass a resolution that calls upon Washington to "swiftly enable the proper functioning of the new Palestinian Administration (err, Iraqi Administration) by taking concrete confidence measures meant to demonstrate a commitment to peace on the part of the US and facilitate the prime minister's smooth assumption of authority."

* The US ambassador to the UN might usefully give interviews to the press stressing the significant fact that this new Iraqi leader is not in favor of shooting at, or using suicide bombers against, American citizens in America; only against American troops and American aid officials occupying Iraq (because such violence harms the Iraqi national cause). Stress the fact that he has extensive contacts with European leaders and American Leftists and the fact that relative to Saddam, the new prime minister is a moderate. Ignore the prime minister's past as a Holocaust revisionist.

* Allow the French and Belgian foreign ministers to travel to Baghdad in order to meet Saddam in his Mukata headquarters. They should make sure that he is being adequately provided with water, cigarettes, sardines and caviar.

* The US, UN, EU, UNESCO, AID, IMF, BRD, WTO and other international relief agencies should put together a global package of assistance totaling billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq from the destruction that Saddam's regime and America's war inflicted on the Iraqi people. As for the costs of war incurred by America in order to protect the world from the menace of Saddam's regime well, that's America's burden alone.

* In particular, it will be important to rebuild the Iraqi armed forces, especially those security forces needed to maintain law and order. Therefore, Iraqi forces should be cut back from 16 armies and militias to only four, then trained and armed by the CIA and French special services.

In Baghdad alone, the Iraqis should be allowed to arm a police force that is larger than the entire population of Brooklyn, New York in order to keep the peace, of course.

All hail the road map, right? Then again, perhaps the visionary President Bush doesn't need such a road map.

Come to think of it, neither does Israel.

The writer is director of public affairs at Bar-Ilan University, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

This article was originally published in the Jerusalem Post.