Four leading United States newspapers were divided on the results of US President George Bush’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly requesting international help in rebuilding Iraq.
The liberal Washington Post and New York Times said Bush failed to inspire UN members with his unwillingness to relinquish US control in Iraq, while the conservative Wall Street Journal and Washington Times praised his view that, with or without international help, democracy will prevail in Iraq.
While criticising Bush’s report for being over-optimistic and “aimed more at a domestic audience than the world community,” The New York Times also took issue with France’s hasty timetable for restoring Iraqi sovereignty. But the paper made a case for the UN being allowed to handle Iraq’s political transformation “in return for real help in reconstruction and security”.
“The US clearly fears that if the UN takes over the job, it will make a mess of things. We are in a mess already. What’s needed now is an international plan for dealing with it,” said the editorial.
After noting that Bush “spoke one sentence” about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction “to an audience that last year heard him describe at great length the threat posed by those weapons”, The Washington Post said the president “missed an important opportunity”.
It is not surprising that the international community is not seduced by Bush’s refusal “to dilute the present monopoly of American power over the occupation administration, the reconstruction program or the contracts that have been awarded almost exclusively to US firms,” the Post said.
But it criticised at length French President Jacques Chirac’s “irresponsible demand” for an immediate transfer of sovereignty to the “unelected Iraqi governing council”, while urging Bush to “correct the mistake he has repeatedly made on Iraq”.
Bush, the editorial added, “must be willing to break up the Pentagon’s monopoly and forge a genuine international coalition”.
To do so, the Post added, “Bush must summon the honesty, pragmatism and flexibility that were so absent from his speech yesterday.”
The Wall Street Journal applauded the US president’s return to the UN General Assembly “without apology”, and praised his speech as “properly generous and conciliatory”, whose “tone was a universe apart from” Chirac’s.
The economic daily dismissed French, German and Russian resistance to a new UN resolution sought by Washington, saying that, in the end, Europe “has no desire to see the US fail in Iraq”.
The Post reiterated its long-held stance that “Iraqi security forces will be the only meaningful way to reduce the burden on US troops” since “the rest of the world isn’t likely to provide that many soldiers”.
It would be good for the world if the UN “now decided to help the Iraqi people. But Mr Bush made clear, and without apology, that Americans and Iraqis will succeed with or without such help,” the Journal added.
The Washington Times said Bush “made a strong argument”, was right in not giving any ground on the policies he has pursued since the September 11 attacks, and welcomed his challenge to world leaders and the UN to “play a constructive role in stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and fighting terrorism”.
As if assuming that Washington will have to go it alone in Iraq, the ultra-conservative daily said Bush’s “most formidable challenge” would be convincing the US Congress to fund his $87-billion emergency spending request for Iraq and Afghanistan.
It slammed the Democrats for opposing the request, recalling that the very costly Marshall Plan, after World War II, helped Western European democracies survive and defeat Soviet communism.
“Today, money spent in stabilising places like Iraq constitutes an investment in our national security,” said the Washington Times. — Sapa-AFP
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