AS MY EARLIER POST SUGGESTED, I’m not entirely sure what I think of the Bush Administration’s turn to the UN. But Jonathan Foreman is unhappy and thinks it’s a case of going wobbly that will likely produce disaster:

The issue isn’t the further internationalization of the occupation. (Thousands of foreign troops are already patrolling vast stretches of Iraq.) It is symbolism and timing.

The hasty turn to the United Nations smells of panic, unwarranted panic at that, and even worse, the foolish subordination of Iraq policy to electoral concerns.

The administration may genuinely believe it isn’t engaged in a humiliating climbdown, but that is inevitably going to be the perception, here and abroad.

This may well be true. Of course, if the freed-up troops wind up invading North Korea or Iran, the perception may be different. . . .

He goes on to make some other important points:

How many people know that the 1st Marine Division, which administered the vast South Central region (until handing it over to the Polish-led multinational division Wednesday), suffered not a single combat death since April 12? (This remarkable fact has gone entirely unreported despite the Marines’ repeated attempts to get foreign journalists to make the two-hour journey from Baghdad to Babylon.)

Then there’s the little-known success story of the North (even outside Iraqi Kurdistan, which continues to be a beacon of stability and democratic hope). In Mosul and the area around it, the 101st Airborne has done a superb job (as reported by The New York Times’ Michael Gordon, one of the few reporters willing to do more than file carping stories from the capital) of winning hearts and minds and getting the country back to work.

This is not to say mistakes aren’t still being made. The Coalition Provisional Authority is apparently almost as slow-moving and bureaucratic as a U.N. administration would be, and it continues, almost suicidally, to fumble the task of communicating with the Iraqi people.

And new troops are still often being sent to Iraq without the kind of crowd-control, peacekeeping and policing training that was standard for GIs deployed to Kosovo and Bosnia. They’re also not getting the right equipment, including suffient numbers of armored Humvees.

Still, overall conditions don’t warrant the handing over of either military or even civilian tasks to the United Nations. Especially as there is little reason to assume that the U.N. will do a better job of administration, constitution-framing or even humanitarian relief.

After all, the last time the United Nations tried to set up a democracy in a devastated land — in Cambodia — the end result was the authoritarian Hun Sen regime. Iraqis neither want nor deserve such a government, but they rightly fear it could be the product of greater U.N. involvement in their country.

I have absolutely no confidence in the U.N., which can be counted on to either make things worse, or to cut and run when things get bad. (See what’s happening in Zimbabwe for example.) As for the Marines — I’ve gotten quite a few emails saying that the Marines’ rather different philosophy (bristle with guns, and shoot back massively whenever attacked) has resulted in much better performance, while the Army’s “non-provocative” approach has been much less successful. I haven’t seen anything published on that, though. Is there a story on that somewhere that I’m missing? The only “published” report I’m aware of is this one from Jeff Cooper:

We hear curious accounts from the front concerning the disarming of our own troops. Some people in authority seem to have got the idea that we must not let our people appear hostile to the local Arabs. This has caught on more with the Army than with the Marines. We hear from a couple of sources that the locals have discovered that while they may shoot safely at American soldiers, it is very dangerous to shoot at American Marines, who are inclined to shoot back, and they cannot tell the uniforms apart.

I’m hearing that, too.

UPDATE: More on the UN, here.