Damned if they do…

Because of the international acrimony that preceded the war in Iraq, the United States can’t seem to do anything right.

It must be acutely frustrating for Washington. Those mesmerizing scenes of Iraqis euphoric over their liberation from fear were quickly overshadowed by several days of exuberant looting and vandalism in Baghdad and other key Iraqi cities. If the Bush administration is on a messianic campaign to promote democracy in the Arab world, it’s off to a disastrous start. As one frustrated Iraqi said, it wasn’t freedom but anarchy.

TV footage showed looters taking everything, including kitchen sinks. The Baghdad museum was ransacked. Jubilant crowds gave freedom to everyone, including ordinary prisoners and psychiatric patients.

Yesterday reports said police officers of the fallen regime had teamed up with US Marines to restore order in Baghdad. In other areas of Iraq civilian volunteers also started taking back for safekeeping looted items including toilet bowls and those kitchen sinks.

The kindest word that can be said about the mess is that it was due to an oversight: the Americans arrived fully prepared for war but utterly unprepared for peace. Just as everyone was surprised by the level of rejoicing in the streets of Baghdad after Saddam Hussein disappeared, there was similar surprise as realization dawned that Iraqis were incapable of policing themselves, at least in the early days of post-Saddam Iraq.

The worst that can be said is that the Bush administration deliberately avoided being saddled with post-war maintenance of peace and order.

The American soldiers were clearly unwilling to act as policemen. With Saddam gone and the war all but over, they just wanted to go home. As an American friend told me, they just wanted to punch someone’s nose after the terror attacks on Sept. 11. Now they’ve done just that, they’ve shown the world (once again) how tough they are, so can the troops just go home already?

Many Arabs would love to see the Americans go. And peaceniks around the world quickly changed their rallies from anti-war to anti-US occupation of Iraq. But for now I would think the "liberated" Iraqis would prefer to have GI Joe stay, if only to make sure that vandals and looters would not destroy what the US smart bombs missed.

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Americans aren’t good at cleaning up their mess. In the first Gulf War they encouraged the Iraqis to rise up against Saddam. When Shi‘ite communities did just that, the Americans pulled out of the Gulf and returned home, leaving the opposition groups open to torture and slaughter at the hands of Saddam’s forces. Memories of that abandonment partly accounted for the initial reluctance of Iraqi civilians to support coalition forces at the start of this new war.

In Afghanistan the government that replaced the Taliban regime, noting a slowdown in reconstruction aid, is worried that the Americans are forgetting them in favor of Iraq.

This is one downside of being a superpower: you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. In this latest war there are people who want the Americans to leave Iraq ASAP, and others who fear they might not stay long enough.

This is also one downside of entering a sovereign nation uninvited, with a resentful United Nations watching in the sidelines: you’re expected to leave Iraq ASAP, but not before handing a free, democratic, orderly and prosperous Iraq on a silver platter to Iraqis, with billion-dollar reconstruction projects parceled out equitably to France, Germany and Russia.

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Because of the chaos in many parts of Iraq the ugly impression is that the Bush administration came fully prepared for post-war reconstruction but not for anything like peacekeeping where there’s no money involved.

Critics note that cleaning up the post-war mess would not earn points for Bush back home as the war did. Other critics say that if there is any intensity left at all in Washington over Iraq, it is to make sure American firms corner much of the reconstruction work, which is estimated to cost up to $100 billion.

The US Agency for International Development shortened its bidding and procurement process to rush the awarding of contracts for restarting Iraq’s basic services and rebuilding the country. The bid invitations went to American multinational companies with security clearances and (according to USAID) proven track record in undertaking major reconstruction projects in "post-conflict countries" such as Bosnia and Haiti.

Among the early birds was Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., the Houston-Based firm once headed by US Vice President Dick Cheney. A Bloomberg report said Kellogg, Brown & Root could earn as much as $7 billion from its contract to clean up damage to Iraq’s oil fields.

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I don’t think Iraqis need too many lessons in capitalism and the free market. Nor do they need much tutoring in representative government. Saddam did make a show of looking like a popularly elected president.

All that the Iraqis need is to get used to living without fear of torture or a slow, painful death as they try to pick up the shattered pieces of their country.

Now this could be tricky when they have to live with the former enforcers of the Saddam regime. As in former fascist states, many of these enforcers will go unpunished, classified as those who merely followed orders. Only the top officials will be made to answer for crimes against humanity.

Bringing democracy to Iraq, by the way, is not part of the mandate in the United Nations resolution that the coalition invoked to go ahead with the war. Resolution 1441, passed last November, warned Iraq of serious consequences if it failed to comply with UN exhortations for full disarmament. Saddam is gone but those weapons of mass destruction still have not been found.

And we haven’t even paid close attention yet to the death toll. Already there are critics who point out that freedom came at too steep a price for the people of Iraq. Supporters of the war can answer that more people could have died if Saddam had remained in power. But you don’t count body bags before they are filled, and critics are asking if the end justifies the means in this war.

America can help its case by showing just how good that end can be. The happy ending to this story, however, could still be many years away. Right now, apart from the disappearance of Saddam, the end looks fuzzy and the means too ugly.