A rchive Date
[ 07-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/1853018
The 'queen of Baghdad,' the next fight
By CRAGG HINES
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
April 5, 2003, 1:01AM
It may be a bit premature, but let's move on to one of the wars after the war, the conflict in which the forces under the Rumsfeld command renew the assault on the Powell brigade. As since Jan. 20, 2001, and especially after Sept. 11 that year, it will continue to be largely a battle for the heart and mind of just one person: President Bush.
It remains, at core, a battle between the desire for muscular projection of American force across a globe of geopolitical pygmies (as advanced by Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and chief deputy Paul Wolfowitz) and a more classically diplomatic - and magnanimous - approach (as preached by Secretary of State Colin Powell).
In the pre-invasion set-to, the battle raged, with Powell gaining the upper hand at the time of the first battle of the United Nations (that resulted in Security Council Resolution 1441) but then having to throw in (and properly so) with the war party when the French turned (why was this not surprising) perfidious.
Now, even before coalition troops becalm the Iraqi capital, battle lines of this next engagement are forming and skirmishing is under way, both in Washington and in a string of beachfront villas in Kuwait that are temporary headquarters for the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (as the U.S. civilian occupation force preparing to administer Iraq is known).
Good luck to the forces led by Powell, who is a real-life retired general as opposed to the other side, most of whose leaders are active-duty chicken hawks.
But Powell needs to watch closely the top officers he is taking into the fight. He has either selected or had thrust on him a very dubious senior commander: Barbara Bodine, a senior Arabist in the State Department and former U.S. ambassador in Yemen who helped to make a hash of the investigation of the terrorist attack on the USS Cole.
In the occupation to come, Bodine is to be the civilian administrator of central Iraq, including the Iraqi capital. To her detractors, including but not limited to folks in the Pentagon and FBI, she is already either "mayor" or "queen" of Baghdad.
A senior administration official said that such appointments are not "set in cement yet," but the bureaucratic train looks to be so far down the track that derailing Bodine would be too much good fortune to hope for.
The State Department lost the fight to control administration of Iraq in the days immediately following the war. But as part of the deal, the Pentagon apparently has had to accept State Department appointees for a selected number of posts. Hence, Bodine in the middle, between former generals who will be installed as overseers in northern and southern Iraq.
Bodine's task, if the Bush administration holds firm to its promise, will be to get a fledgling democratic regime up and running. That will be a very curious task for Bodine.
As one report observed last week: "Bodine has extensive ties to Iraqis but not the right ones." A senior administration official was quoted: "She only knows the Baathists, because that's who she dealt with and she's never bothered getting to know the democratic opposition very well."
That's what comes from a State Department career in and for a region given to authoritarian regimes and U.S. acquiescence to them. Bodine began as an East Asia specialist but her interests quickly moved a good bit to the west. She served as a senior officer in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and was the ranking U.S. diplomat in Kuwait at the time of the Iraqi invasion in 1990. She and coworkers were initially held hostage in the U.S. Embassy. While in Yemen, Bodine was, apparently unbeknown to the would-be hijacker, a passenger on a flight briefly commandeered by an Arab extremist.
Bodine seems to come from the April Glaspie School of International Relations. Motto: "My host country, right or wrong" Modus operandi: Speak softly and carry an empty attaché case.
At one point in the Cole investigation, she blocked the re-entry into Yemen of the FBI agent leading the agency's inquiry. She felt the FBI force was too big and too insensitive to local feelings, and she opposed the lead agent's determination to outfit his personnel with more than side arms.
It may be too strong to say that Bodine thwarted an inquiry that could have led to breaking up the Sept. 11 attacks, but her actions certainly didn't help.
Formal appointment of Bodine could give lie to Powell's claim in Brussels last week: "Well, I don't believe I am a symbol of failing U.S. diplomacy."
It's been reported that after Bodine left Kuwait in 1990, her father wished aloud that her next posting be in "Switzerland or Holland or some place like that."
Unfortunately for Powell and the nation, that did not occur.
Hines is a Houston Chronicle columnist based in Washington, D.C. cragg.hines@chron.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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