I must disagree with your assessment of the utility of the UN in Iraq. You assume that all that the UN can do is change minds by flying the international flag. The changing of the flag of occupation would be symbolic, but it would not be inconsequential. It would ease fears that the occupation is being used to manipulate politics in the Middle East and to allow US companies to profit from oil. Furthermore, the UN is generally willing to work to empower governments more rapidly in order to work with them—not wholesale, but in areas that are of no concern to security and foreign relations (this is the difference between autonomy and self-government.) What cannot be dismissed is that the UN has experts and expertise in a broad range of fields—political, economic, social, cultural—that the US armed forces do not. Over the course of the 1990s every skill that could be called “nation-building” was attacked by legislators, weakening many departments in the administration. The US armed forces lost the ability to be an occupying force in the process. The UN has attempted to nurture its abilities in these areas, even as the same US legislators threatened the UN budget.

Will the presence of the UN stop the attacks? No. To some extent they are nationalist—against the occupation rather than the US in particular. Insurgents will attempt to cultivate distrust among the Iraqi middle class: they will make them feel that the occupation cannot provide security. Even more, any UN takeover of the occupation would require that the US become more involved in that agency—the US would still be involved in Iraq. The US will need to rethink its policies about the UN—especially the US refusal to allow UN troops to engage. Even if the presence of the UN has no direct effect on security, the benefits that I have outline above will in the long run.