Says reconstruction efforts "need to deliver something quickly"

By David Shelby
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Criticizing what she said was carping and political bickering in the current international dialogue about Iraq, Danielle Pletka, vice-president of the American Enterprise Institute, asserted that "We all seem to forget that this is actually a story about Iraqis."

"International relations have nothing to do with the day-to-day well-being of the Iraqi people," she maintained at an October 10 videoconference with Spanish journalists. "The issue is what can be done for the people of Iraq. Right now there are representatives from several dozen nations inside Iraq. They are working hard for the well-being of the Iraqi people. If there were more nationalities that would be fabulous, and I'm sure the Iraqis would be really excited."

Pletka recently returned from a five-city tour of Iraq in which she was able to speak to a number of Iraqis about their current living conditions and their hopes for the future.

"What do we want for Iraq? Do we want Iraq to fail? Or do we want Iraq to succeed?" Pletka asked. "Those are very simple questions, but it seems to me that we take very few opportunities to step back and ask ourselves those very basic questions," she asserted.

She went on to affirm that rebuilding Iraq is a "worthwhile endeavor" on behalf of the Iraqi people because "their lives have been hell for the last 30 years and surely they deserve something better. Surely we who have more owe them a little bit of help in doing that."

Pletka noted that "the more you get out, the more you realize that there is an enormous openness in [Iraqi] society, one that I think is all the more enthusiastically embraced by Iraqis because of the years of dreadful oppression that they were under."

Attempting to put conditions on the ground in perspective, she remarked that "if you think about the possibility of a major city losing its government, losing its electricity, and having every single hardened criminal let out of prison at the same time, and then you look at Baghdad, you are amazed by the order, by the decency of normal people. ... [T]his is really a 95 percent positive story about Iraqis."

In discussing the prospects for democracy in Iraq, John Zogby, president of Zogby International, a public opinion polling firm, remarked that his organization's mid-August poll of 600 adults in four Iraqi cities revealed that a 52 percent majority were skeptical about the potential for democratic rule.

He also noted, however, that 70 percent of those polled indicated a desire to determine their own political future. He concluded that there is nothing "inconsistent with the eventual implantation of democracy in Iraq," asserting instead that the poll numbers reflect a "negative view based on the present experience and not necessarily an outlook towards the future. It's not anything that could not change."

Pletka observed that a large part of the problem in dealing with the conditions on the ground is the desire on the part of the United States to rebuild Iraq according to 21st century standards, just as it wants to rebuild New York after September 11. "It means that we have lengthened delivery times. It means that we're starting from zero trying to get to 100 when all the Iraqis are really expecting is that we get things working again," she maintained.

"A little bit of expediency goes a long way in this regard," she continued. "Perhaps that is an area in which we really can criticize the initial efforts of the United States." She noted a faster turnaround on projects executed by local Iraqi contractors despite lower transparency and went on to affirm that "those are things we need to think about ... We need to deliver something decent, but we also need to deliver something quickly."

Asked if the reconstruction would be easier with United Nations troops or U.S. troops, Pletka responded, "When someone rebuilds a road for you, do you check what color their hat is? I would argue that the answer to that is ‘no,' and that legitimacy derives from what you deliver and not from the hat you're wearing."

She went on to observe that multinational forces are well-suited to peacekeeping missions but not to situations where combat, hostilities and low-intensity warfare continue. "There, having six different divisions speaking 10 different languages is a major problem," she explained.

Pletka expressed her disappointment in the administration for not devolving more power and sovereignty on the Iraqis. "I think that we and all our allies have an important role to play," she asserted, "[but] the longer we seek to control, seek to take credit for things that happen, ... the more we discredit the Iraqis with whom we had hoped to partner in leading Iraq and the more we discredit ourselves."

Returning to her premise that the Iraqis themselves should be the focus of the story, Pletka affirmed, "This isn't about ‘Saddam Light' or Saddam with a different moustache, and the United States has to walk very carefully in understanding that at the end of the day, although Iraqis are very happy to be rid of Saddam, they would be very happy to be in control of their own lives."

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)