# Posted 11:46 AM by Patrick Belton  

RECONSTRUCTING IRAQ WATCH: CNN reports on nine Iraqis, drawn from different parties and ethnic groups, expected to head the interim government. General Garner greeted the arrival of Ambassador Jerry Bremer (short story here, saying "he will get more involved in the political process. I'm doing all of it and don't want to do all of it.") (Purely from a stylistic viewpoint, "don't want to do any of it" would likely have been a much more memorable phrase.) CS Monitor also reports on city council and mayoral elections which took place in the northern city of Mosul. Reuters notes that several candidates withdrew from the election to protest the division of delegates along ethnic lines (Mosul is mainly Arab, with a large Kurdish minority and substantial Assyrian and Turkmen communities); U.S. military officials suggested that they were radical Islamists who wanted to discredit attempts at representative government.

Project for the New American Century releases a statement calling for political support for "staying the course" (which principally consists of a piece in the Weekly Standard by a NY Post Reporter, arguing that the US military presence is much better received in Iraq than most reporting has indicated). Tom Friedman's piece "Our New Baby" (which counterintuitively is not actually about recent happy events in the Friedman household) argues that Democrats are still quietly hoping for the war to turn out to be a disaster, to prevent the president from campaigning for re-election on it and in the meantime using its luster to push a conservative domestic agenda; Friedman calls on Democrats instead to recognize that "we now have a 51st state of 23 million people, and engage in constructive opposition on how we should go about building a democracy there (instead of quietly hoping for a failed effort which will help elect a President Kerry). Both a reporting piece in the WaPo and an analysis article in the LA Times (both via CS Monitor) raise concerns about insufficient U.S. poltiical engagement in Iraq, which has permitted competing religious, tribal, and ethnic forces to instead occupy the political ground.

Larry Kaplan praises U.S. covert assistance to moderate Shia (and to a lesser extent, Sunni) clerics, sensibly hopes for a U.S. presence comparable to that in Germany after World War II, but despairs at signs from DOD that it hopes to withdraw American forces within six months, ceding to a multinational NATO force. Over at the Weekly Standard, three investment hands with mid-east experience attempt to inject new ideas into the rebuilding-Iraq discussion, including a thick sister city initiative (in which US cities would, through means public and private, infuse money and talent into the public schools, hospitals, and pharmacies of their paired ciy), a New Deal-style public works program to get unemployed Iraqis to work, and a (possibly less promising) idea to put the U.S. in charge of funding mosques and training imams, as a way of heading off extremism bankrolled from Tehran or Riyadh. They also note the promising (Bruce Ackerman-meets-Alaska permanent fund) idea of a national oil trust giving each Iraqi citizen a share in the nation's oil and mineral resources, and a stake in the success of the democratic regime. Also over at the Weekly Standard, Agency alum Reuel Marc Gerecht presents a well-written, nuanced essay in which he reminds his readers (who had forgotten their Bernard Lewis) of the long history of influence of western ideas in the Middle East, and argues on that basis that a calm, extended U.S. engagement with Iraq could stand a high chance of profoundly transforming the region - especially in the light of the discrediting of the discrediting of Ba'athist authoritarianism. His conclusion, "we should stay calm and realize that the fiercer this debate, the more profound its repercussions. We shouldn't be talked into accommodations we will certainly regret." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion