"The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people, and it is unacceptable to me," he said. And with this rare admission, he laid out his plan, which included increasing America's military presence in Iraq.

Well, looking at the fratricide and barbarism going on in Iraq today, any withdrawal of American forces would not only be a dereliction of duty but also a call for an unprecedented disaster across the whole region. If the Americans pull out prematurely, a surge of Iranians will fill the void. And one cannot rule out Saudi Arabian-led Arab Sunni states entering the fray. Iraq may then become the battlefield for the first full-blown Sunni-Shiite war in the modern Muslim world. This will be good for nobody.

The only option, therefore, is to go along with President Bush's plan of increasing forces and adding massive economic and reconstruction assistance, a thing that the Americans should have done from the beginning.

In a speech President Bush made at the United States Army War College Carlisle, Pennsylvania on May 24, 2004 Bush said:

Helping construct a stable democracy after decades of dictatorship is a massive undertaking. Yet we have a great advantage. Whenever people are given a choice in the matter, they prefer lives of freedom to lives of fear. Our enemies in Iraq are good at filling hospitals, but they do not build any. They can incite men to murder and suicide, but they cannot inspire men to live, and hope, and add to the progress of their country. The terrorists' only influence is violence, and their only agenda is death.

But after almost three years, the Bush Administration has shown no better record than its adversaries. What is needed is to show to the Iraqis that Americans are better at building than filling hospitals. This could be done not only by deploying 20,000 more troops but also 20,000 civilian engineers, doctors, teachers and professors to build schools, hospitals, roads, and bridges. America should do more to treat the sick and teach in Iraqi schools and universities.

In this way the Iraqi people will see the Americans more as saviors than occupiers, more as constructors than destroyers. Iraqis will become stakeholders in the great construction projects and rehabilitations schemes. Thousands will find jobs and thousands will be glad to see their children having quality education. It will also reduce the people's allegiance to sectarian parties and teach them to care more about their income and the future of their children. As it is today, I am sure American troops will be more welcome to the Sunni areas of Iraq than the Iraqi army and police forces, which have proven their inclination for creating sectarian strife rather than quelling it.

The sectarian and ethnic tensions in Iraq today are mostly over economic resources more than it is on religious or political issues. The disintegration of Iraq into satellite states for neighboring countries is in no one's interest. The Arab Sunnis will not allow themselves to be left with the wasteland of Iraq as their homeland, while the Shiites will not be happy with a small Iranian-satellite Arab Shiite state in the oil rich south. They would rather lead a strong, powerful, and multiracial Iraq, which lives at peace with its affluent Arab neighbors. If the people of Bosnia and Rwanda could overcome their genocidal ethnic wars and forge ahead to build their future, I don't see why Iraq cannot do the same.

Once the American's win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people through such massive life-giving projects, neither Iraqi people nor the general Muslim world will have any sympathy for the hollow rhetoric of Al Qaeda.

With this muscular economic policy and if America consults intensively with its friends in the region, I have no doubt that Iraq can emerge from its morass and lead the Arab world to a new age of democracy and prosperity in the coming decade.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration should realize that any goodwill overtures will come to nothing if it entangles itself in more embarrassing 'shoot from the hip' situations such as bombing Somali sheepherders and launching new military adventures in the region.