28 February 2003
"The Plan for a Postwar Iraq," by Deputy NSC Adviser Steve Hadley
(In event of war, U.S. would rely on civilian agencies in relief effort) (870) (This column by Steve Hadley, Deputy National Security Adviser to President Bush, first appeared in The Washington Post February 28, 2003 and is in the public domain. No republication restrictions.) (begin byliner) The Plan for a Postwar Iraq Steve Hadley If Saddam Hussein refuses to disarm and makes war inevitable, it will be a war of liberation, not occupation. As President Bush said in his speech to the United Nations last September, "Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause and a great strategic goal. The people of Iraq deserve it, and the security of all nations requires it." Securing this liberty and sustaining it in a post-Hussein Iraq will be a huge undertaking. But we are well prepared. Planning has been underway for months, across every relevant agency of the U.S. government. The goals for which we plan are clear. First, along with our coalition partners, we must ensure the rapid flow of humanitarian relief into Iraq. The current humanitarian situation in Iraq is tenuous. For food, most Iraqis rely on rations from the oil-for-food program. But the Iraqi regime's manipulation of the program has led to mortality and malnutrition rates worse than before the Persian Gulf War. Hussein has a history of manufacturing humanitarian crises. We must be prepared for this -- and we are. The U.S. government is stockpiling nearly 3 million Humanitarian Daily Rations to meet emergency food needs. We are also stockpiling blankets, water containers, essential medicines and other relief items capable of helping up to a million people. Much of this material is already in the region, and more is on the way. To distribute these and other materials, we will rely primarily on civilian relief agencies. We are counting on the efforts of international organizations such as the United Nations and the Red Cross and Red Crescent, as well as various nongovernmental organizations. These groups have the expertise, personnel and equipment that can literally mean the difference between life and death. We will fund and facilitate their efforts to the greatest extent possible. In circumstances where no U.N. agencies or nongovernmental organizations are available, the U.S. military may be required to provide limited relief. Such relief will be under the guidance of civilian experts, with the goal of getting civilian agencies into these areas as quickly as possible. To coordinate all this activity, the U.S. government is training a 60-person civilian disaster assistance response team, the largest in U.S. history. Made up of humanitarian emergency professionals from several agencies, the team will soon have representatives in Kuwait, Turkey, Jordan and Qatar. We will also work to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, which for years has been mismanaged and neglected. Early efforts will include restoring electricity and clean water, as well as addressing the immediate need for medical care and public health. Over the longer term, we will assist the Iraqi people in creating a more stable and more vibrant economic system. Specifically, we will help them create a modern system of taxation and budgeting, stabilize the dinar, and resolve debt and reparations obligations. A critical part of the reconstruction effort will be ensuring that Iraq's natural resources are protected from acts of sabotage by Hussein's regime and that they are used for the benefit of the Iraqi people. Iraq's natural resources belong to all the Iraqi people and -- after decades of being used to build palaces and weapons of mass destruction -- will finally be used for their benefit, not Hussein's. Finally, a post-Hussein Iraq should be truly free and democratic. The United States will not seek to dictate to the people of Iraq the precise character of that regime. But no one should be interested in simply replacing one dictator with another. The goal -- which we are confident we share with Iraq's people -- is an Iraq that is moving toward democracy, in which individual rights are protected regardless of gender, religion or ethnicity. Assisting and rebuilding a post-Hussein Iraq will require an enormous effort. Success will be possible only by working with Iraq's neighbors and the international community. And, most of all, we will need the support of Iraq's people. The United States will work to win that support. Many are already asking how long America is prepared to stay in Iraq. The answer is straightforward: We will stay as long as is necessary, but not one day more. We will, from the outset, draw free Iraqis into the task of rebuilding their country, and we will transfer responsibility to Iraqi entities as soon as possible. This is an awesome responsibility. When future scholars look back on the history of the Middle East at the beginning of the 21st century, instead of asking, "What went wrong?" they may instead ask, "Why did it go right?" If they do, one of the answers will be that the free nations of the world understood that their values and their interests pointed in the same direction: toward freedom. (The writer is deputy national security adviser to President Bush.) (end byliner) (Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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