Saddam's Ouster Doesn't Quell Suspicion
Monday April 21, 2003 7:30 AM
DOHA, Qatar (AP) - The ouster of Saddam Hussein has done little to quell the world's suspicions about U.S. motives in Iraq despite the Bush administration's insistence that its soldiers came as liberators, not conquerers.
The distrust of U.S. intentions could hinder reconstruction if Iraqis resist American attempts to restore order. It also could hurt attempts to repair frayed relations with allies and promote Middle East peace.
Demonstrators in Iraq last week chanted ``America is God's enemy!'' and clerics accused the United States of invading Iraq to please Israel.
``It is tremendously important that the United States not be perceived as Imperial Rome in this world,'' said David Elliott, a political scientist at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif.
U.S. officials repeatedly have said the war was fought to free a nation from a brutal dictator stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
``There is nothing more important in what we are doing right now within Iraq than providing opportunities for the Iraqi people,'' Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the war in Iraq, said last week.
But in some parts of the world, a different view persists: that the war in Iraq was for oil, for profit or some kind of neo-imperialist conquest.
That may have been exacerbated by a decision last week to award a multimillion dollar postwar reconstruction contract to the politically connected San Francisco-based Bechtel Group. The bidding process was limited to a group of U.S. firms, most with strong connections to the Bush administration.
U.S. officials defended the process, saying a swift reconstruction needs companies with known track records and employees with security clearances. But the move stoked the perception that profit, not liberation, was behind U.S. action in Iraq.
Another factor that makes some doubt America's sincerity is that weapons of mass destruction - the primary reason for invading Iraq - have not been found.
Oil, too, has critics up in arms. The size of Iraq's oil reserves is second only to Saudi Arabia's, and many Iraqis were quick to note that nearly every ministry in Baghdad was bombed and looted during the bombardment, except the oil ministry.
After his Baghdad theater was torched by looters, actor Fadel Abbas lamented that U.S. soldiers failed to protect the city's cultural treasures.
``They didn't want to protect these places - only the oil ministry,'' he said.
U.S. officials insist that revenue from Iraqi oil will help pay for reconstruction, which is expected to cost as much as $600 billion over the next decade.
Some Iraqis have said they want nothing do with Jay Garner, a retired U.S. general put in charge of Iraq's reconstruction by President Bush. And Iraqi crowds have denounced Ahmed Chalabi, a former exile and opposition leader whom they believe Washington wants to install as leader.
Chalabi told reporters in Baghdad last week that he doesn't see himself as a candidate to lead Iraq.
Establishing a broad based postwar government with help from the international community could help dispel negative perceptions. But that, too, is uncertain, with the United States resisting a major role for the United Nations in choosing a new government.
U.S. officials had argued even before the war that ousting Saddam could promote democratization in the Middle East, making the region less of a breeding ground for terrorists.
Yet U.S. ties with undemocratic governments like Saudi Arabia and its staunch support of Israel make it unlikely that Mideast reformers will look to Washington for help.
Arab distrust of U.S. intentions may also stymie prospects for a breakthrough in the standoff between Israelis and Palestinians, though many are hoping that regional shifts in power resulting from the Iraq war will make one possible.
Many countries believe ``the United States is a hyperpower out of control that simply acts on its own whims without taking into account the interests and concerns of everyone else,'' said Elliott, the political scientist.
