Now that Iraq is Saddamfrei, that shattered country is to benefit from a Bush Admin-istration reconstruction program that the New York Times called in mid-April "the most ambitious American effort to administer a country since the occupations of Japan and Germany at the end of World War II." This laudable objective became obscured in the first five weeks after the end of major fighting, when disagreements erupted in high places over the aims and timetables of U.S. policy in Iraq. The public watched a U.S. team stumble into the Mesopotamian huddle without a playbook.
Peacekeeping, like war, is an interactive process. The United States was clearly caught flat-footed by the level of anarchy that ensued in Baghdad and in the shatterbelt of Arab-Kurdish contact in the north. The mission was mis- or understaffed--a soupçon of civil affairs, military police lite, and administrators either clueless about what they should be doing, or unwilling or unable to function because of poor security. In the midst of mayhem, General Jay Garner, Washington's Douglas MacArthur designate, behaved like a patient off his medication. In a moment of delusional optimism, he averred that his tenure would last "three months or so", but that his legacy would be a democratizing, if not fully democratic, country under paroled Iraqi command. A little later, on April 23, he averred that, although the Iraqis may dislike us now, "in very short order, you'll see a change in attitudes and the will of the people themselves." Alas, Garner was yanked, denied the opportunity to savor the promised effusions of Iraqi gratitude.
