This week, almost four years after the invasion of Iraq, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Malaki announced plans for a regional conference—in Baghdad—to steer the country away from a Balkan-style breakdown. The conference, which has Washington’s blessing, is set for March 10.
It is yet another indication of the wrongness of those who say the United States has been unilateral and alone in Iraq. Of all the criticisms of the Iraq war—and many are valid—this is the flimsiest. Media mantras notwithstanding, this has never been a unilateral war. In fact, after four years of war and counterinsurgency, some 25 nations in addition to the US and Iraq still have boots on the ground. South Korea, for instance, just recently extended its deployment commitment. And Britain’s February announcement of a troop drawdown, which was widely misreported as a withdrawal, is just another example of the major media fashioning its own narrative based on some of the facts. Headlines at ABC, AP and The San Francisco Chronicle all read, “Blair Announces Iraq Withdrawal Plan,” but what the prime minister actually announced was that Britain was lowering its troop commitment from 7,100 to 5,500—and that those 5,500 would stay “for as long as we are wanted and have a job to do.” We can debate whether this is prudent or helpful to the overall war effort, but it’s a far cry from withdrawal.
As to UN validation, for whatever that’s worth, President Bush used part of his 2007 State of the Union to remind us that, “In Iraq, multinational forces are operating under a mandate from the United Nations.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has added, “We have now passed four major Security Council resolutions on Iraq, most of them unanimously, pledging the UN’s support for everything from an international mandate for our coalition forces, to an international rejection of terrorism in Iraq, to the goal of advancing Iraq’s democratic process.”
Back to the upcoming conference in Baghdad: Surprisingly, all of Iraq’s neighbors have signed on, including Iran and Syria. Egypt will also be represented, as will the United States and Britain. France, Russia and China will also be invited. The conference will be carried out at the sub-ministerial level, according to Rice. She expects a follow-on meeting of foreign ministers in April.
But let’s not expect too much from this neighborhood gathering. As George Walden, the author and former British Member of Parliament, once observed, “the group dynamics of diplomacy are not always the straightest path to virtue.”
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