Yes, Beg Allies for Iraq Help

The United States admitted a mistake last week and installed an Iraqi council as the public face for the occupation government. That was a good political move, but weeks late. Now Washington needs to admit another error: freezing out the United Nations.

It’s past time to get that organization’s experienced peacekeepers and nation-builders into Iraq in substantial numbers. A large U.N. presence does not guarantee success -- the formation of a broadly representative, independent Iraqi government within a few years. But without major help from the U.N. and from other nations, the U.S. could end up stationing more than 100,000 vulnerable troops in a hostile land for years longer than planned and at enormous cost, in blood and treasure.

On April 8, the day before U.S. troops pulled down Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared that “the United Nations has a vital role to play in the reconstruction of Iraq.” The next day, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said, “The U.N. is very important to the process.”

But three months later, the U.N. is largely invisible in a land where it is sorely needed. Powell said last week that he was talking with other countries about winning “more of a mandate from the United Nations.” Bush administration concessions are overdue to get help from a body that opposed the war.

India demonstrated the stakes last week when it declined to send 17,000 troops to Iraq without U.N. authorization. Other countries also have demurred.

Thousands of 3rd Infantry Division soldiers who were expecting to be back home at Ft. Stewart in Georgia by September were told their Iraq stay would be extended indefinitely.

Greater security isn’t the only requirement in the land where U.S. troops are attacked daily and more than 30 have been killed since May 1. Iraqis need power, water and functioning oil fields to generate revenue to rebuild a nation crippled by decades of war and dictatorship. There’s no U.S. monopoly on the talent to get those jobs done.

Minxin Pei, a Carnegie Endowment scholar, said that of 16 U.S. attempts at nation-building in the 20th century, only four resulted in a democratic country 10 years later. Washington knows how to win wars, not build free countries.

Richard Haass, who left a top State Department job last month to head the Council on Foreign Relations, says Iraq needs “muscular policing,” not by combat troops but by police and peacekeepers adept at dealing with civilians -- and all the better, for perception’s sake, if they are Muslims.

Getting others’ help makes not just military but economic sense. The Pentagon’s recent admission that military operations in Iraq are costing $3.9 billion a month -- nearly double the previous estimate -- shocked Congress. The news should push lawmakers to demand that the administration go to the U.N. and big allies like France and Germany for assistance.

Before the war, several think tanks offered postwar plans. The administration ignored the advice. Last week, five experts at those think tanks who toured Iraq for 11 days -- the Pentagon sensibly asked them to visit -- concluded that improving security was the top priority.

Also needed: international recruitment of civilians to help restart the economy; more money to get factories back up and give people jobs; and a much expanded coalition with countries uninvolved in the war.

These are the realities that many warned about for months; these are the realities that led this page and others to oppose a U.S.-led war.

There is no going back. That’s why the Bush administration can’t continue to substitute wishful thinking for facts. It must stop resisting the obvious: In Iraq, the United States needs all the help it can get.