Ibrahim al-Jaafari: A Marshall Plan could transform Iraq (Op/Ed by Iraqi prime minister)

LAST week I was at Blair House in the centre of Washington, DC. In this house is the table on which George Marshall in June 1947 signed the plan to pump today's equivalent of $US500 billion ($647 billion) into the impoverished economies of Europe as an investment against future conflict. The plan was controversial but nobody would now deny its far-sightedness.

Nazism gave way to a lasting democracy, economic devastation was replaced by slow but sure progress towards economic regeneration. Consider the Germany of 1945 and the Germany of today: which would you rather have as your neighbour?

Last week I went to Brussels with an Iraqi delegation for a conference with foreign ministers of more than 80 countries. All have agreed to help Iraq towards a better future. On Friday I met President George W. Bush; today I will meet Tony Blair. Both have decisively chosen to back freedom and democracy in Iraq. They are right to have done so. It is not just a matter of principle but of the security of their own countries. Terrorism knows no boundaries; it strikes all over the world. Democracy, transparency and justice in the Middle East will dry up the wellsprings of hatred and terrorism and bring security to Europe and the US.

Terrorists are criminals and must be tried as such. But dealing with the spread of terrorism in the Middle East is more complex, as it thrives on ignorance, hate ideologies and the political failures of modern states.

Arabs are better educated in technical sciences, engineering and languages than in contemporary political and social sciences. Political education in the Middle East is usually indoctrination. By contrast, Iraq's recent electoral experience enlightened millions. It showed that education is to vote a government into power, then watch it grapple with the issues that confront people in their daily lives and see whether it succeeds or fails, and listen to it explain its policies honestly and frankly. A free press leaves people able to discriminate between propaganda, rumours and lies and the unvarnished reporting of facts.

Perhaps those elections can be an education also for the people of Western democracies. They can see that, like them, Iraqis want to choose their own leaders and are entirely capable of running fair elections and respecting the result. They can also see that there is nothing to fear if people choose to vote for an Islamic party.

I am not only the first democratically elected leader of an Arab country, I am also the first prime minister in the Middle East to come from a religious, Islamic opposition movement at the head of a diverse ethnic and political alliance. Embracing diversity within human society is not just a political necessity, it is rooted in my faith. Islam teaches that there is no compulsion in religion and that freedom of choice is divinely granted; it is dictators who need to cater to fanatics to stay in power.

Saddam Hussein is a case in point. He passed laws to limit religious freedom and degraded women's lives. I will reverse Saddam's legacy and welcome Iraq's diversity. I welcome the strong contribution that women can make in the workplace and in political life, where they make up one-third of our National Assembly, more than in most Western democracies.

Marshall said: "Our policy is not directed against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos." Today is the time for a new international Marshall Plan for Iraq and the broader Middle East, directed not for or against any policy but against ignorance, tyranny, hatred and anarchy.

Marshall repaired the decaying infrastructure of Germany after six years of war and 12 years of Nazi rule. In Iraq we have had nearly 40 years of fascist rule and have been in practice at war for half that time. I have seen throughout Iraq the marks of economic collapse and depredation this has left. Iraq today has few English speakers, it has hundreds of thousands of ex-soldiers trained for nothing but war and its universities, which once enjoyed a worldwide reputation, lag behind those in the rest of the region. It has debts totalling hundreds of billions of dollars and there has been no investment in its infrastructure for more than 20 years.

Three generations of Iraqis have grown up under a dictatorship, learning to take orders but not take initiatives or responsibility, and educated in religious and political hatred and isolationism. My people are a strong people; their will survived. The marks of Saddam's brutal and divisive rule, however, will take time to heal. Many of my people, as well as soldiers from the multinational force, are still being killed by terrorism.

The way will not always be easy. I am confident, though, that the prosperous democracies of the world will be as far-sighted today as Marshall was in 1947. Much blood had to be shed and money spent before peace was achieved in Europe. In Iraq the fight for democracy has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

In the long run, however, it can secure centuries of peace and prosperity. Iraq's fight against terrorist networks and training camps, and the poverty and ignorance that supply them, has become the world's fight for the security of humanity.

How about the major part of his proposed Marshall Plan be simply this. Do their best to allow us to help them get those northern and southern oil fields pumping millions of barrels per day and shipping out of their now secure ports.
There is enough oil in their ground to make them the envy of the mid-east if they use it in a fair way, and it could pay back a big chunk of change to the US as a 10 year thank you.

I should have added. I do admire the courage and commen sense Ibrahim al-Jaafari posses. I do hope he can continue to bring his people together and prove the L/MSM, demos, and the rest of the worlds malfactants totally wrong on all points regarding the US/Brit decision to change things in the mid east. Once and for all.

How about the major part of his proposed Marshall Plan be simply this. Do their best to allow us to help them get those northern and southern oil fields pumping millions of barrels per day and shipping out of their now secure ports. There is enough oil in their ground to make them the envy of the mid-east if they use it in a fair way, and it could pay back a big chunk of change to the US as a 10 year thank you.

Excellent point! If you keep an eye on the good news from Iraq posted regularly at http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/ you will discover that there is already a huge effort underway by the USA and our coalition partners to tap the real potential of the Iraqi oil fields.

" Excellent point! If you keep an eye on the good news from Iraq posted regularly ..."

I do on occasions. Of course opening up their oil fields, rebuilding the grossly neglected equipment, etc., has been
on the book prior to the initial invasion. But thanks for the link.

"Hopefully, the expats will return from abroad and teach them what they learned."

Let us hope so. And we must realize there are a lot of smart minds that had lived through the horrors of the past thirty years, both Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd. This POTUS is so terse.
His style and that is fine. I wonder how many millions of Americans had a clue as to what he meant when three years back he said, paraphrased, "The Iraqi people are smart, they know what has to be done".
All those years of terrible dictatorship and understandable lingering fears, which the terrorist obviously want to capitalize on, will slowly come to and end. And this time around the Iraqi people are going to have an entirely different viewpoint on just what Americans are made of.

And the rest of the mid-east trembles. Perhaps this time around as those Muslims sitting at their boob-tubes that can pick up the POTUS's speech, shall have a little less anger in their hearts, assuming they have been getting news of a somewhat more balanced presentation, as they see an American president dispite the horrors thrown at him by his own people continue to speak the cause of giving freedom and equal opportunties to all Muslims. Unless their true die hard Islamic fundelmentalist of the many flavors available, they have to be softning up a bit. And they are. More then we realize. Few less potentiate for wanting to run a truck laden with C4 into some nuclear power plant in America.

Good speech. I think investing in Iraq is investing in the future of freedom. The Iraqi Prime Minister made the case for what a free society can do. Iraqis are determined to work to better their country but they can't reverse 40 years of dictatorship on their own. The Marshall Plan left Europe free and prosperous able to contain and defeat the evil Soviet Empire. We can do the same in the Middle East and that is why Al Qaeda fears the spread of freedom - it means the beginning of the end of their bloodstained ideology.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

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