The Iraqi Monkey Trap

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War Analysis: The Iraqi Monkey Trap

By William Raspberry


There is a legend, the Rev. Earl Neil told the congregation of Trinity Episcopal Church here one recent Sunday, that certain African tribesmen have a clever way of trapping monkeys.

They begin by making a paw-sized hole in a coconut, then filling the coconut with rice or some similarly attractive food. A monkey will come along, stick in his paw and grab a fistful of rice -- and then find that he can't get his paw out.

"It screams for help, but it is trapped by its own greed," Neil explained. "As you and I can see, all the monkey would have to do is turn loose of the rice. His open hand could easily be withdrawn. The problem is that the monkey places greater value on the rice than on his own freedom."

That was the attention-getting windup. Here was the pitch:

"The Bush administration has stuck its hand into a coconut called Iraq, grabbed a fistful of oil and control, and now is finding it difficult to get out. It is trapped by its power and its greed. Now it screams for help from the United Nations (which it had earlier dismissed as irrelevant and inconsequential). And all the administration would have to do is to turn loose some control, and it might be able to withdraw with dignity.

"But like the monkey, it places greater value on the spoils of war than on freedom for the Iraqi people, reconciliation with the world order and what might very well be the soul of our nation."

The analogy isn't perfect. After all, it was the administration that laid the coconut trap in the first place -- against international and domestic advice that there was no need to rush unilaterally into what was likely to be an easy war and a fiendishly difficult peace.

But it works well enough. Even the administration itself might agree. Early last week administration officials ponied up a series of what they hoped would be seen as fist-opening concessions in a new resolution adopted Thursday by the U.N. Security Council. It would establish a multinational force to help the American- and British-led forces in Iraq and also provide more money to rebuild that devastated country. In exchange, the United States would grant at least symbolic self-governance to the Iraqi people by declaring that the Iraqi Governing Council and its ministers "will embody the sovereignty of the state of Iraq."

The administration clearly wants its hand free of the coconut.

But it also wants the rice. The Iraqi Governing Council is seen by many Iraqis as a creature not of Iraq's people but of the United States. And as if to underscore the point, the resolution reaffirms America's authority to administer and rule the country (and its assets?) until we deem it time to turn control over to people we deem worthy of wielding it.

If it's hard to know whether the Bush administration wants a freed hand more than it wants the rice, it may be because different influential players in the administration want different things and are willing to pay different prices for them.

In many ways, the president's mind has been a battleground for the fighting between pragmatists and ideologues -- between those who see America's interests in more or less traditional terms (trade, good relations with neighbors and some deference to international rule) and those who see America's unchallenged power as a heaven-sent opportunity to reorder the world -- at least that part of it called the Middle East.

Perhaps that is why the president is trying to consolidate postwar authority under his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, thus bringing control back to the White House and away from the Rumsfeld/Cheney/Wolfowitz axis of hubris.

But pretty soon the president himself will have to do something about that coconut. Does he want the rice -- control of Iraq's oil and lucrative rebuilding contracts for his political friends at Bechtel, Halliburton and elsewhere -- more than he wants the possibility of extracting himself from a mess he was warned about but still blustered into?

Will he end up just another trapped monkey?



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