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INTERNATIONAL REPORT

The U.S. should occupy Iraq

By Alan Caruba

April 14, 2003

I am hearing a lot of very silly talk coming from President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. Both keep saying that the Iraqis should run Iraq. The Iraqis have a 4,000-year history of being ruled by despots of every description. Furthermore, they are Muslims; preferring Islamic law based solely on the Koran, and have NO experience whatsoever with representative government. Then throw in the conflicts between the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites, and you have the perfect recipe for chaos.

Simply stated, the United States should occupy and run Iraq for as long as it takes to get that nation on its feet economically, socially, and politically. The Iraqis need a real system of laws and justice. We should leave only when Iraqis have been given the opportunity and experience of actually participating in a representative government, and those lessons have been passed onto a new generation through the educational system.

Why have Americans suddenly developed a distaste for occupying nations we have conquered or invaded? It is because they have forgotten, or never learned their own history!

First, it was a bunch of malcontents from England, and then Holland, who came over and "occupied" what would become the United States of America. Until their arrival, it belonged to indigenous Indian tribes. When there was a critical mass of people calling themselves Americans, we fought a war with England to continue our "occupation," declaring ourselves a sovereign nation.

When more people showed up, we began our trek to the West Coast, occupying "Indian territory." In fact, we set up a number of forts and fought the Indians; and then we put them on reservations.

Along the way, we occupied large areas of land that belonged to Mexico. Texas first declared itself an independent nation, and then, through conquest and acquisition, we added California and the territories of New Mexico and Arizona to our map.

America occupied Hawaii from July 7, 1890 until it became a State. We also found time to occupy the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, and we ran the Philippines from 1898 until 1946. When we gave it back to the Filipinos, we included a wonderful constitution, but that nation turned sullen and ungrateful. They have since invited us to send some troops to help them chase and kill Communist and Islamic terrorists.

Our occupation of both Germany and Japan after World War II was both benevolent and inspirational. Gen. McArthur became a virtual shogun from 1945 to 1949. The U.S. ended its occupation in 1952, when Japan became an independent nation. We stayed over nine years in Germany, from 1945 to 1954, before we felt confident it had rid itself of its Nazis. Our troops have been there ever since, initially to protect Germans and others against the threat of a Soviet Russian invasion. Now there’s a possibility that we might move somewhere more friendly. The Germans will miss the millions that we pump into their economy if we do that.

So why wouldn’t, why shouldn’t we occupy Iraq? There are many good reasons for this, not the least because the Iraqis have proven over the millennia that they require a strong hand when it comes to being governed. One doesn’t become a democratic nation overnight. It takes time, and part of the effort will be the rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure. An entire middle class of entrepreneurs must be created virtually from scratch! Someone has to administer the millions its oil will produce, and I suggest that someone be America. There is a need too for reparations to the U.S., Great Britain, and other coalition members for the costs of the war.

There were and are practical reasons for invading and occupying Iraq. The most important one was to rid our nation of yet another Middle East country supporting and funding terrorism directed against Americans. We took away Osama bin Ladin’s base in Afghanistan, and now we have rid ourselves of Hussein.

I am not suggesting we invade Syria or Iran. With any luck and cunning, the Iranians can be encouraged to topple the oligarchy of ayatollahs making their lives miserable. The sheer stagnancy of Syria might bring about regime change there. Most certainly, however, a large American presence in Iraq for a long time to come will have the effect of bringing about the change that must come to this cancerous region of the world.

There’s another reason to occupy Iraq. It is to keep France, Germany, and Russia out of there. They chose to oppose our war, and now they should stand in the corner with the rest of the losers. And let’s keep the United Nations out of Iraq in any capacity. The UN is the reason we were forced to put our armed forces in harm’s way. It should be rebuffed and humbled in every way possible.

Under Saddam, the Baathist Party was no different from the Nazi Party, a gang of thugs who existed to plunder their nation. These are the same people who fought a war with Iran for eight years, achieving a stalemate, and then invaded Kuwait! It will take years to find a few decent Iraqis to run the place, and years to put on trial and shoot the rest who previously did.

I fear, though, based on the rhetoric coming out of the White House and 10 Downing Street, that the United States and Great Britain are going to make the biggest mistake ever. They are going to try to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible in order to avoid being called "occupiers" (a term which, until now, has been applied exclusively to Israel by the Arabs for over 55 years.)

What is wrong with running the place our troops fought and died to liberate? The first instinct of the Iraqis was to loot it.

Alan Caruba is the author of Warning Signs, a new book published by Merril Press. His column of the same name is posted weekly on the web site of the National Anxiety Center.