Thomas Friedman offers his thoughts on an alternative proposal to broker the exile of Saddam, which asks the real question, why aren’t we seeing proposals like this or anything similar to it if the Bush administration is serious about sane alternatives to war?

“This proposal has several virtues: By engineering Saddam’s exile we make the moral, legal and strategic point that no one can get away with defying the U.N. and flouting international norms forever. But we do it in a way that avoids a U.S. occupation of Iraq, with all the risks and dangers that could entail. It will be a big political win for you: your tough line will have been vindicated, your public will be enormously relieved, uncertainty will be removed from your markets, and the image of the U.S. bully will be softened. Most of all, the Germans and French, who deep down would like to see you step into a mess in Iraq, will be left looking silly.”

“It would be a big win for us Arabs too — because if we could actually broker a deal to avoid a war in Iraq, it would be the first time that we really assumed responsibility for our region.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 29th, 2003 at 12:16 pm and is filed under general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.