Good, Fast, Cheap -- Pick any two
Reader comment on item: Let Iraqis run Iraq

Submitted by btk2 (United States), Oct 26, 2003 at 22:20

While I wholly agree that responsibility for policing, maintaining, and governing the cities, nay most of the country, should be transferred at the earliest opportunity to the Iraqis I question whether it is wise to impose a strict time table for doing so.

My reasoning rests on the fact that in order for the Iraqi government to function effectively it needs to have all three branches of its government at least past their formative stages before handing them over to the Ba'thist thugs and neighboring terrorists.

The Iraqis have plans for a legislative branch; someone is there to make laws. They'll have a judicial branch; someone is there to interpret the laws. What's lacking now is a strong executive branch -- sworn to uphold an Iraqi constitution -- needed to enforce the law. From what I've gathered off of new reports, the Iraqis and the coalition are in the process of building an army and a police force from the ground up; both will take some time to come to effective fruition.

I'm all for getting coalition troops out of the cities as quickly as possible, but not before there's someone to shoulder the burden afterwards. This process needs to take as long as it takes.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".