| http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=131524
“The American Approach is Incoherent”
An Interview with Joseph Wilson
By Pascal Riche
La Liberation
Wednesday 20 August 2003
A private consultant today, in 1991 Ambassador Joseph Wilson was chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, and, in this position, the last American diplomat to have met with Saddam Hussein. He revealed that in the beginning of 2002 he had made a report of an inquiry demonstrating the implausibility of the alleged Iraqi uranium purchases in Niger invoked by President Bush to justify the war.
Do the Americans lack troops in Iraq?
I’m more of the view we should trust our military, who, following the example of General Eric Shinseki (who just left as head of the US Army, en) estimate that “several hundred” thousand men would be necessary in Iraq. But what is particularly lacking are forces properly trained for internal security, that is to say, policemen. The United States is poorly equipped: there’s no national police system in the United States such as the gendarmerie. The FBI is only an investigatory agency. The American administration should solicit other countries’ expertise to put a peace-keeping system in place, but it doesn’t seem to be taking this route.
With the approach of elections, pressure for a pullout of American troops will increase. Can it succeed?
President Bush articulated a vision, the establishment of a pro-Western democracy in Iraq. But I’m under the impression the administration is getting ready to change its criteria for victory. The publicized obsession with finding Saddam Hussein is a sign of it. I’m afraid that starting next spring we’ll hear the following speech: “We’ve liberated the country, killed the tyrant, and given the Iraqis the tools to create their own democracy. It’s time to bring home our soldiers.” Unfortunately, that’s not the way to construct a democracy. It takes time.
Why is the United States encountering so many problems?
The Iraqis are under the impression they’re being occupied. And a country that feels itself occupied always gives birth to resistance movements. It’s not because they detested Saddam Hussein that Iraqis are going to make friends with foreign invaders. For 25 million Iraqis, the Americans and the British are above all the ones who imposed economic sanctions on them for twelve years. The approach being followed is incoherent, from the refusal to ask for a UN resolution to internationalize the undertaking, to the idea of putting Ahmed Chalabi (a pro-American Shiite exile, en) in the middle of the political game… From the beginning we should have done everything to guarantee two key elements: the population’s security and well-being (electricity, water, garbage disposal, medicine…). It was necessary that the Iraqis feel an improvement in their lives. Only on that condition could they have offered themselves the luxury of considering a new system of government...
Does the Bush Administration seek to assure the security and improvement of living conditions for Iraqis?
I don’t see the political will for it. It would be necessary to organize a massive injection of medical aid, food… Everything under international auspices, because, to succeed, we’ve got to get out of this occupation mentality and convince the Iraqis that it’s an international project. Instead, we still hesitate to return to the United Nations. The President ought to allow the State Department to advance on a multinational level, to hold serious discussions with the other actors in the region, and, in Europe, with the Germans and the French…
The Shiite majority seems overall to accept the American presence…
What we’re seeing in the South is more, in my view, a tactical cease fire. It will take time for the Shiite clergy to consolidate their power in the South. They can let the Americans be in charge of the war against the Sunnis. When the Americans don’t find any more Sunnis to kill, the Shiites will figure that they’ve sufficiently consolidated their power and that they’re ready to take over their responsibilities in Baghdad.
Is there a way to evaluate the size of the “resistance movement” against the Americans?
Saddam Hussein could count on about 400,000 men in the armed forces, including the Fedayyin. If we’ve killed 10% of them, that leaves 350,000 men with a certain sense of military organization, the vast majority of whom are Sunni. They were in power for decades. It’s in their interest to return to it, or at least to resist “the invaders” and Shiite ambitions.
Is the “Balkanization” of Iraq one of the scenarios envisaged by Washington?
In their writings the neoconservatives never talk about “democratization”, but only about the fall of the regime. Have they truly absorbed the fact that it would be necessary to stay in Iraq a long time to assure its democratization? Or would they satisfy themselves with a country cut in three between Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites, weakened for the long term by its own squabbles? One may wonder… | |
