While Democrats and Republicans agree that Iraq’s decent into chaos runs counter to humanity’s interests, there is considerable dispute on how best to resolve the conflict. President Bush has ordered more troops into the region, and all agree that key is a political solution among factions now engaged in brutal violence against each other.
Ex-President Jimmy Carter has repeatedly demonstrated his abilities in conflict resolution and democracy building. As president, he insightfully recognized the need to remove the Shah, resulting in the Iranian revolution and bringing to power the current government. They showed their appreciation by taking over the care and feeding of the American embassy staff, keeping them as guests of their government for more than a year. Today, the Iranian government that Carter facilitated is helping the world’s nuclear weapons shortage, as they work to add their own to the supply.
During the Clinton presidency, Carter skillfully extracted a promise from North Korea to stop their efforts to produce nuclear weapons, a commitment they kept, until they didn’t. In more recent years, he attested to the election of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, as well as the current Palestinian Authority government. Americans need look no further than their daily news reports to see Palestinians, liberated from Israel’s “occupation” of Gaza, violently enjoying the fruits of their Carter-certified democracy.
It is time for Jimmy Carter, winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, to go to Baghdad. As we are often reminded in the press, Iraq is on the verge of civil war, with growing prospects of splitting into ethnically controlled cantons. Surly, Carter is well suited to persuade Iraq’s Shia and Sunnis to be nicer to each other, showing them the merits of peace rather than Iraq’s looming apartheid.
Anyone can attest to the election of dictators, undercut allies and extract “pie crust promises,” easily made and easily broken. Examples of such behavior are plentiful. Picking on Israel, Carter’s latest undertaking, requires little skill or courage – much of the planet has been beating up on Jews for millennia.
But, bringing harmony to Iraq – that is a job for a real man of peace. Saddam is gone. Send Carter to Baghdad.
John R. Cohn is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University. He writes frequently about the Middle East and recently returned from Israel where he participated in the Herzliya Conference on the Balance of Israel’s National Security. John R. Cohn is member of the Board of Directors of SPME.