Re-imagining Iraq

“Unless we change our communication and demonstrate a different image to the people on the street, then we’re gonna get to the point where we are going to be looking for quick exits. I don’t believe we’re there now. And I wouldn’t want to see us fail here.”

– Ret. Gen. Anthony Zinni

Gen. Zinni, former special envoy to the Middle East for President Bush, was offering an assessment of Iraq last Sunday on “60 Minutes,” but he might as well have been talking about the U.S. street. The reasons for the war – terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, human rights – are failing to persuade even those they once did. The resolution presented to the United Nations by the United States and Britain yesterday begins to communicate a different image from the unrelenting negative views the world has seen for months.

The resolution to the U.N. Security Council, formally ending the occupation of Iraq, would transfer governing authority in Iraq to an Iraqi interim government by June 30 and authorize a multinational force to establish and maintain peace with that new government’s consent. The resolution dissolves the Iraqi Governing Council and calls for national elections scheduled for no later than Jan. 31. Certainly, the authority of the new government would depend on the multinational authority’s effectiveness. Given the number of bombings in recent weeks, that suggests a force of the size that critics of the Pentagon’s plan have said for more than a year was necessary.

The resolution, according to news reports, would give the interim government control over oil and gas resources, a demand made strongly by Iraqis to the United Nations last week. As part of that transfer of power, it would also give the interim government authority over an oil-revenue fund now controlled by the United States and Britain.

It was announced Monday that U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is still trying to decide the makeup of the interim government, due to take over June 30, but the tone from U.N. diplomats in various news stories was generally positive, suggesting that international support might be found for the mission.

That is crucial. As with Afghanistan, establishing areas of safety and then enlarging them is an effective way for the interim government to do more than react to crises. When there was a sense of growing safety in Kabul, the government was formed and the country began to look to its future. When the level of safety shrank, warlords returned and the peacekeepers more often found themselves under fire.

Yesterday, two bombs exploded outside the Green Zone in Baghdad, the heavily protected site of the U.S. headquarters there. That was near the same site as the blast last week that killed the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, Izzedine Salim. If after a year of occupation the bombs are still exploding at the U.S. front door, the next phase of the administration’s policy, the contents of the U.N. resolution, is unlikely to succeed, suggesting that even more changes are needed.

“But regardless of whose responsibility I think it is, somebody has screwed up” in Iraq, Ret. Gen. Zinni said Sunday. “And at this level and at this stage, it should be evident to everybody that they’ve screwed up. And whose heads are rolling on this? That’s what bothers me most.”

It may be bothering the public too, and communicating a new image to Iraq and the United States may mean moving some of the older images to the side.