Sunday, July 18, 2004

Why Iraq should be more like El Salvador

Former U.S. envoy to El Salvador Pete Romero (actually, he never made to become a full-fledged ambassador here, due to US domestic opposition to his appointment over his negative role in the Jesuit case) writes today in the Miami Herald about how it's too bad El Salvador was not more of a model for the U.S. role in Iraq.  Notably, the UN should have been allowed to take the lead.
He writes that "El Salvador is arguably the most successful peacemaking, peacekeeping and democratic institution-building operation in the history of the United Nations."
Nice thought, but Bill Stanley and I noted a decade ago how and why the UN role in El Salvador was carried out "under the best of circumstances" and would not likely be repeated elsewhere.  But I shouldn't complain.  Romero says all of the right things in criticizing the US administration.  Makes him almost sound like a Democrat, rather than the loyal public servant to Republican administrations that he was throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

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