OxBlog

Tuesday, April 01, 2003

# Posted 5:34 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

CELEBRITY OCCUPATION: Donald Rumsfeld has written off the State Department's candidates for running occupied as Iraq as "'too low-profile and bureaucratic' for the work envisioned". The State Department's candidates had actually gone through training on were on the point of shipping out to Kuwait before being ordered to "stand down".

And a damn good thing they were. Assuming the eight were, in fact, low-profile bureaucrats, one might guess that the State Department selected them in order to minimize the amount of media attention given to the occupation once it starts.

Why? So no one trashes State when it starts to endorse half-hearted democratization measures. Or, possibly, so that State can cede as much authority as possible to the United Nations with drawing too much attention.

If Larry Kaplan's report in TNR is on target, then it seems both Foggy Bottom and 10 Downing St. want to make peace with the rest of Security Council by offering it political control of the occupation. [Full text for subscribers only.]

Bad, bad idea. Having UN High Commissioner or the like means having someone who has to answer to the non-democratic states on the Security Council as well as taking the interest of Arab dictatorships into consideration.

While there is no question that the US and UK will look out for their own interests in the process of occupation, their interests are far more compatible with the process of democratization. So let's hope the Pentagon puts its heavy hitters in Iraq. The WaPo thinks former CIA director Jim Woolsey is on the inside track for a big job. Good choice. Woolsey is fully committed to democratization as well as being a Washington player.

[According to Patrick, Woolsey also has a stunningly beautiful right-hand (wo)man. While Josh and I are inclined to agree, we think she got the job because she's a Rhodes Scholar.)

Let's hope the rest of the Pentagon's candidates are as important as Woolsey or moreso. Let's get the world to watch, so America has to put its best foot forward.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall says the WaPo article cited above
makes painfully clear that Rumsfeld is intent on stacking the entire post-war American occupation government with members of the DC Iraq-regime-change mafia. It's not even an American occupation; it's an AEI occupation. Every made-man in the gang gets his own ministry apparently. Maybe they'll set up an Iraqi Defense Policy Board that Richard Perle can run in Baghdad. I hear he's on the market again. Ken Adelman, Ministry of Pastries?

Now we know where all those discredited cakewalk Iraq-hawks are headed. They're going to Baghdad to run the occuption.
In short, the Pentagon's motivation in all of this is partisan politics, not a serious commitment to promoting democracy. Here's what I'm going to do to get to the bottom of this: Tell Josh Marshall that his first priority after the war is over is making sure that the media stays focused on the truth about the occupatin.
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