By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: May 6, 2004
We are in danger of losing something much
more important than just the war in
Iraq. We are in danger of losing America
as an instrument of moral authority and
inspiration in the world. I have never
known a time in my life when America and
its president were more hated around the
world than today. I was just in Japan, and
even young Japanese dislike us. It's no
wonder that so many Americans are obsessed
with the finale of the sitcom "Friends"
right now. They're the only friends we
have, and even they're leaving.
This administration needs to undertake a
total overhaul of its Iraq policy;
otherwise, it is courting a total disaster
for us all.
That overhaul needs to begin with
President Bush firing Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld - today,
not tomorrow or next month, today. What
happened in Abu Ghraib prison was, at
best, a fundamental breakdown in the chain
of command under Mr. Rumsfeld's authority,
or, at worst, part of a deliberate policy
somewhere in the military-intelligence
command of sexually humiliating prisoners
to soften them up for interrogation, a
policy that ran amok.
Either way, the secretary of defense is
ultimately responsible, and if we are
going to rebuild our credibility as
instruments of humanitarian values, the
rule of law and democratization, in Iraq
or elsewhere, Mr. Bush must hold his own
defense secretary accountable. Words
matter, but deeds matter more. If the
Pentagon leadership ran any U.S. company
with the kind of abysmal planning in this
war, it would have been fired by
shareholders months ago.
I know that tough interrogations are vital
in a war against a merciless enemy, but
outright torture, or this
sexual-humiliation-for-entertainment, is
abhorrent. I also know the sort of abuse
that went on in Abu Ghraib prison goes on
in prisons all over the Arab world every
day, as it did under Saddam - without the Arab League
or Al Jazeera ever saying a word about
it. I know they are shameful hypocrites,
but I want my country to behave better - not only because it is
America, but also because the war on
terrorism is a war of ideas, and to have
any chance of winning we must maintain the
credibility of our ideas.
We were hit on 9/11 by people who believed
hateful ideas - ideas too
often endorsed by some of their own
spiritual leaders and educators back
home. We cannot win a war of ideas against
such people by ourselves. Only Arabs and
Muslims can. What we could do - and this was the only
legitimate rationale for this war - was try to help Iraqis
create a progressive context in the heart
of the Arab-Muslim world where that war of
ideas could be fought out.
But it is hard to partner with someone
when you become so radioactive no one
wants to stand next to you. We have to
restore some sense of partnership with the
world if we are going to successfully
partner with Iraqis.
Mr. Bush needs to invite to Camp David the
five permanent members of the
U.N. Security Council, the heads of both
NATO and the U.N., and the leaders of
Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and
Syria. There, he needs to eat crow,
apologize for his mistakes and make clear
that he is turning a new page. Second, he
needs to explain that we are losing in
Iraq, and if we continue to lose the
U.S. public will eventually demand that we
quit Iraq, and it will then become
Afghanistan-on-steroids, which will
threaten everyone. Third, he needs to say
he will be guided by the U.N. in forming
the new caretaker government in
Baghdad. And fourth, he needs to explain
that he is ready to listen to everyone's
ideas about how to expand our force in
Iraq, and have it work under a new
U.N. mandate, so it will have the
legitimacy it needs to crush any uprisings
against the interim Iraqi government and
oversee elections - and
then leave when appropriate. And he needs
to urge them all to join in.
Let's not lose sight of something - as bad as things look in
Iraq, it is not yet lost, for one big
reason: America's aspirations for Iraq and
those of the Iraqi silent majority,
particularly Shiites and Kurds, are still
aligned. We both want Iraqi self-rule and
then free elections. That overlap of
interests, however clouded, can still
salvage something decent from this war - if the Bush team can
finally screw up the courage to admit its
failures and dramatically change course.
Yes, the hour is late, but as long as
there's a glimmer of hope that this Bush
team will do the right thing, we must
insist on it, because America's role in
the world is too precious - to America and
to the rest of the world - to be
squandered like this.
OIL IS TOO PRECIOUS THAN RUMSFELD'S
CAREER.
