Is Iraq or the US Stable Enough to Survive the Divisive Election Campaigns of 2004?

By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty.com

January 31, 2004

Sometimes people who get the least amount of publicity for what they are doing do the greatest amount of good. Lakhdar Brahimi, a 70-year-old former Algerian Foreign Minister, who has worked tirelessly in Afghanistan in the past couple of years as a United Nations coordinator, is a case in point. While the world’s airwaves, and the American media has given almost daily front page coverage to any and all glitches that have occurred in Operation Iraqi Freedom, we’ve heard hardly a peep out of them about what’s happening in Afghanistan since Osama bin Laden and the Taliban are no longer in charge there.

Two years ago, all the same news sources and anti-war activists who are now totally convinced that Iraq is going to explode and force the Americans out of their country, with their tail between their legs, were saying exactly the same thing about Afghanistan. The (National Guardian of London reported on October 21, 2001, exactly two weeks after the US began bombing Taliban and Al Qaeda bases, that:

“UN sources in Pakistan said growing concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country (of Afghanistan) - in part, they say, caused by the relentless bombing campaign - has forced them to take the radical step. Aid officials estimate that up to 7.5 million Afghans might be threatened with starvation.

“The World Food Program has calculated that 52,000 tons of wheat must be distributed in Afghanistan each month to stave off mass starvation. Since the aid program was restarted - on 25 September - only 20,000 tons have been supplied and 15,000 distributed. The concern is that the coming winter will make relief efforts more difficult. The first snows have already fallen on the Hindu Kush Mountains and the isolated highlands of Hazarajat.”

The very day before this scary article was headlined by the National Observer, Lakhdar Brahimi was asked at the National Press Club if, in his meetings with Bush Administration officials, the subject of humanitarian relief (which always is financed mostly by American taxpayers) had come up. He responded:

“We think that there are millions of people at risk, not because of the bombing campaign or this, what is happening now, but because of the drought, because of the civil war that has been going on for a long time. And these humanitarian activities must continue.”

President George W. Bush's angry enemies mention none of this in the election year of 2004. Much of the good he has done is even unknown, apparently, among his friends and supporters. In President George W. Bush’s announcement that “the United States military has begun strikes against al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan” on Sunday October 7, 2001,) he also told the world:

“At the same time, the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies. As we strike military targets, we'll also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering men and women and children of Afghanistan.”

American planes DID drop food, which the anti-Bush lobby ridiculed as virtually worthless, the war was soon over, the American Army Engineers quickly built needed roads to bring in food and no one starved in Afghanistan in the winter of 2002-2003.

But, you probably never read or heard much about that. You certainly didn’t see any glowing reports or TV specials about a virtually unknown former Algerian foreign minister named Lakhdar Brahimi who was managing the Afghan post-war programs that apparently saved the lives of those 7.5 million Afghans the media said would starve if Americans didn’t go away.

Having helped the Afghans through the two year process of getting back on their feet, organizing an interim government, and the adoption of the new Afghan Constitution on January 4, 2004 by the Loya Jirga, Brahimi has just been appointed undersecretary-general of the UN and is giving advice on how to prepare for a new Iraqi Constitution and fair elections.

On Tuesday, January 27, 2004, Lakhdar Brahimi spoke at the National Press Club, which is composed of top media leaders in this nation. Only a couple of news outlets even mentioned he was AT the National Press Club. Only the Washington Times actually told its readers what Brahimi said to counter the anti-Bush factions at home, abroad and in the media that are demanding “immediate elections” in Iraq. Brahimi said:

"If you get your priorities wrong, elections are a very divisive process. They create tensions. They create competition. And in a country that is not quite stable enough to take that one has to be certain it will not do more harm than good. A country has to be stable enough to take those heated debates.”

Right. Based on some of the mail I am getting from people who hate President Bush for liberating the Afghans and the Iraqis, I wonder at times if the United States is stable enough to get through the 2004 elections.

Given the raging criticism leveled at Bush and the conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan, it might be helpful to remember that, even with the remarkable George Washington urging the factions to unite and think of the welfare of the nation instead of themselves, it took six years from the time General Cornwallis surrendered to even CALL a Constitutional convention and eight years after Cornwallis surrendered to have an election for president.

It seems to me that we might stop and thank George W. Bush and Lakhdar Brahimi for their remarkable accomplishments to date in bringing liberty and better order to nearly 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq. Common decency and journalistic integrity, which once existed in America, would have required a word of thanks.

To comment: Mary@bannerofliberty.com