Coalition Countries Only

The world is responding to a ruling by the Pentagon that only allows countries that are participating militarily in the post war effort. The quote from White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, in the article:

'These are countries that have been with us from Day One, these are countries that are contributing forces, that have been making sacrifices and that's why this decision was made,' McClellan said. 'If additional countries want to participate with our efforts in Iraq, then circumstances can change.' "

Naturally, the world is outraged:

Germany, a leading opponent of the war, called the decision "unacceptable," and government spokesman Bela Anda said it went against "a spirit of looking to the future together and not to the past."

In Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov said the directive "will hardly foster the mobilization of the international community" to rebuild Iraq, "more likely the opposite," according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Let's see if I get this straight: Iraq is freed from Saddam at the cost of many lives from the coalition forces and those same troops will then secure the country so that companies of the countries that refused to help can then make a profit. Think that maybe a few folks overseas are living in a fantasy world? Even the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel "sympathized with the U.S. position":

"It is childish to reject the war but to be offended when afterwards no profit is to be made from reconstruction," the newspaper said Thursday.

From the FoxNews version of the story:

Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution (ed: a former Clinton adminstration official) said, "At a time when we should want the rest of the international community to come in and help to the maximum extent possible in the rebuilding of Iraq, this gratuitous slap at our major allies seems to be particularly ill-timed and misplaced."

Gratuitous slap? GRATUITOUS SLAP? ALLIES? Mr. Daalder, I doubt we are guilty of slapping our allies. Would allies have opposed you as vehemetly as France did and still does? Would allies have continued to arm a known enemy with ambition? Would allies refuse to aid your forces, no matter how passive the aid, as Turkey did and still does?

If our "allies" had presented a unified front to Saddam, perhaps Saddam would have relented in some way: tougher inspections, humanitarian reforms, change of government. And, yes, I used scare quotes.

But we will never know that.

Instead, getting Saddam out had to be done the hard way. And now, it is even the more difficult because of the lack of our "allies" participation. Really, it's not just the lack of troops, but (more importantly) the lack of support which lends political aid and comfort to the enemy of Iraqi freedom. NOW let's talk about who's getting slapped. Real allies stand with you, what precious few we have: Britain, Australia. (the article fails to mention the Polish commando unit, GROM, because their participation wasn't known at the time). Post war, there are others coming to help and that is appreciated: such as Italy, Japan and Spain.

Ok, now off the soapbox and back to the topic.

Really, the reality of this situation is that although countries such as Russia, Germany and France cannot be prime contractors, they can be subcontractors. In fact, Alcatel--a French company--already has a portion of an Egyptian contract to rebuild the mobile phone network. So what this is working up to be is a tempest in a teapot, perhaps.