A genuine alternative for Iraq?

I ran across today's editorial in the NYT, "Trying to Contain the Iraq Disaster", and read it with increasing despondency.

Fortunately, I was also directed (h/t, Mahablog) to an article in the British Guardian newspaper, "Baker's missing alternative", by one Dilip Hiro, an Indian writer on matters Middle Eastern, now living in London: here I read perhaps the most hopeful proposal I have seen yet for a post-US-occupied Iraq.

Surely, the Times is right at the start:

No matter what President Bush says, the question is not whether America can win in Iraq. The only question is whether the United States can extricate itself without leaving behind an unending civil war that will spread more chaos and suffering throughout the Middle East, while spawning terrorism across the globe.

And they are right to say that the prospects for such an extrication are quickly "vanishing". But these are the substance of the proposals:

• firing Mr. Rumsfeld [as much fun as it would be to see that, in itself],
• renouncing permanent bases in Iraq [good idea, but is that even close to the root problem?],
• demanding all-party Iraqi reconciliation talks (to “continue until some agreement is reached on protecting minority rights, dividing up Iraq’s oil revenues, the role of religion in the state, providing an amnesty for insurgents willing to put down their weapons, and demobilizing and disarming the militias”, motivated by the “threat of an American withdrawal”) [with all our moral authority-- what, will W call on Jimmy Carter?!],
• “convening the neighbors”-- Iran and Syria, Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich principalities [funny, no mention of Turkey—at least as much interest, but a non-starter for the Kurds]-- to “pressure their clients inside Iraq to step back from the brink”, and
• stabilizing Baghdad, by the "transfer of thousands of American troops to the capital from elsewhere in the country" [as if US troops are not always part of the problem].

All of these might seem reasonable, but will get us nowhere. The only US move that can help is for us to get out of the way. Our presence only catalyzes resistance and violence there.

Now, and I should have placed this first in the article, Hiro's idea would seem to have more practicality. It is not Iraq's fractious neighbors who should be brought in, but more distant Muslim nations, who might be able to make and enforce peace, without the threat of neo-colonial domination. He mentions the Arab League and a broader group, the Islamic Conference Organization (ICO). In even turns out that

in April 2004 in Putrajaya, the capital of Malaysia, then the ICO chair, six nations offered troops for a stabilizing force in Iraq but only under the UN command. . . . They were Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan and Yemen - none of them an immediate neighbour of Iraq. This was in line with a condition set by Iraq's leaders, nervous that its immediate neighbours had an agenda of their own regarding Iraq.

Of course the US (in the person of Colin Powell) back then turned them down, insisting upon US, and not UN, control. But perhaps the US could now change its mind? OK, not King George. Somebody please tell the Democrats: HERE'S A PLAN!!!

And we could still fire Rumsfeld: what the heck.