A LITTLE HELP FROM FRIENDS

The chorus of senators for calling for a broader coalition to help keep the peace and rebuild Iraq is growing louder and larger. Sen. Susan Collins, who returned last week from a three-day tour of the country, is now a member of the group. “I am convinced it would help if we brought in troops from other countries. … Even countries that did not support the war may help in the peacekeeping and rebuilding,” Sen. Collins said Monday. So far, such calls for more international help have been unheeded by the Bush administration. That is unfortunate.

As the nine senators who traveled to Iraq can attest, there is certainly enough work to go around. American and British soldiers have their hands full trying to protect themselves and Iraqi civilians from insurgent fighters, searching for weapons of mass destruction and rebuilding the country’s infrastructure. Some units have been in the Middle East for six months. It is time to put aside lingering ill will over what countries did and did not support the war in Iraq and get to work rebuilding the country. The calls for more help from the United Nations and NATO should be heeded.

Even Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has joined the choir. “We need to involve the world, the globe, because we’re talking about freedom,” he said. To date, NATO, whose Western European members Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld derided as “old Europe,” has contributed by helping Poland assemble a 2,300-member force that will soon go to Iraq. Germany, France and Turkey, vociferous opponents of the U.S.-led military action, have not been asked for help.

Including more countries in the peacekeeping and rebuilding phase of the Iraq mission will help on many fronts. The United States needs assistance in securing the country where more than 100 U.S. and British troops have been killed in the two months since the fighting has officially been deemed over.

Sabotage and guerilla attacks are still commonplace. Assistance is needed to restore water and electricity supplies, to rebuild schools and medical clinics, and to pay for this work that costs at least $3 billion a month.

Even more importantly, help is needed in setting up governments at all levels in the country run dictatorially for three decades. In the current absence of local councils and a national government, extremists, especially those who view America as an occupying rather than liberating force, are likely to hold sway. “If you allow a vacuum to be created, it will be filled. Others will take advantage, especially those who oppose us, those who prey on the American presence,” Sen. Olympia Snowe said recently. The longer it takes to set up municipal and national governments, the more political opposition to the U.S. presence will grow.

There are positive developments in Iraq. The United Nations World Food Program has distributed 838,000 tons of food to Iraq’s 27 million people. The agency said it sent a truck into Iraq every minute during the month of June. Sen. Collins is right that the United States needs to do a better job of letting the world know about the positive work, including food distribution and school rebuilding, that is being done by U.S. troops. But, the positive could quickly be overshadowed by the negative if the United State persists in trying to do too much on its own.