Rice’s leadership will hurt America

In review of the confirmation hearing of Secretary of
State-designate Condoleezza Rice, I am appalled at her insistence
to continue to mislead the American people.

As a very involved adviser on public policy both domestic and
national, having served in Vietnam and having seen the mistakes of
the Johnson and Nixon administrations, I am convinced that Iraq is
our new Vietnam.

I have absolutely no confidence in Rice, and I was appalled that
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a celebrated Democrat, would allow herself
to be seen supporting Rice at her confirmation hearing. We have
lost enough men and women in Iraq, and I fear that under
Rice’s leadership as our Secretary of State, more will be
killed due to the administration’s failure to face the truth
head-on. Shame on them for sending our children into battle
needlessly.

After insulting allies and shredding alliances, this president,
with the advice of Rice, does not have the trust and confidence to
bring others to our side in Iraq. We must rebuild and lead strong
alliances so that others will share the burden with us in Iraq and
elsewhere.

Rice should be advising the president to persuade NATO to make
the security of Iraq one of its global missions and to deploy a
portion of the force needed to secure and win the peace in
Iraq.

She should work to convene a summit of the world’s major
powers and states in the region, as well as key Arab and Muslim
nations, followed by a standing contact group to consult regarding
the way forward. This group should be pressed to make good on the
steps called for in UN Security Council Resolution 1546 (providing
troops, training for Iraq’s security forces, a special
brigade to protect the UN mission and more financial assistance and
real debt relief).

We should offer potential troop contributors specific and
relatively low-risk but critical roles, such as training Iraqi
security personnel and securing Iraq’s borders. Rice also
needs to give other countries a stake in Iraq’s future by
encouraging them to help develop Iraq’s oil resources and
letting them bid on contracts instead of locking them out of the
reconstruction process.

Next, credible elections are key to producing an Iraqi
government that has the support of the Iraqi people, and an
assembly must write a constitution that yields a viable
power-sharing arrangement. Because Iraqis have no experience
holding free and fair elections, the president agreed six months
ago that the United Nations must play a central role.

But just a few days before the Iraqis are supposed to go to the
polls, the U.N. secretary general and administration officials say
the elections are in grave doubt because the security situation is
so bad. Not a single country has offered troops to protect the U.N.
election mission, and the U.N. has less than 25 percent of the
staff in Iraq that it needs to get the job done.

Again, Rice should be advising the president to recruit troops
from our friends and allies for a U.N. protection force. Iraqis
must be trained to manage and guard the polling places so that U.S.
forces do not have to bear that burden alone.

Rice must support convening a regional conference with
Iraq’s neighbors in order to secure a pledge of respect for
Iraq’s borders and non-interference in Iraq’s internal
affairs. We should help Iraqis establish a constitutional process
for negotiating long-term power-sharing arrangements between Kurds,
Sunnis and Shiites.

We must invest in long-term capacity building and training for
political parties and civil society groups, and prioritize training
for the legal and judicial sectors in order to develop a stable and
independent Iraq.

DiBritto is the executive director for development and
patient/donor relations at the David Geffen School of
Medicine.