Posted on 09/29/2003 10:40:39 AM PDT by jmc813
Ambassador Paul Bremer, head of the US provisional administration in Iraq, appeared before Congress last week to lobby hard for another $87 billion for nation building. This figure is in addition to the nearly $80 billion we’ve already spent in Iraq, and the new funding request is for 2004 only. If we stay in Iraq beyond 2004- and the administration has made it clear that reconstruction will be a long-term project- American taxpayers easily could spend one trillion dollars over the coming years.
The stark reality is that the federal government will fund the open-ended occupation of Iraq either by raising taxes, borrowing overseas, or printing more money. All three options are bad for average Americans.
It’s important the American people know exactly what they will be paying for in Iraq. The $87 billion requested is such a huge sum that it seems meaningless to most of us. The details, however, will astound anyone who resents seeing their tax dollars spent overseas.
The following are just some of the administration’s requests:
-$100 million for several new housing communities, complete with roads, schools, and a medical clinic;
-$20 million for business classes, at a cost of $10,000 per Iraqi student;
-$900 million for imported kerosene and diesel, even though Iraq has huge oil reserves;
-$54 million to study the Iraqi postal system;
-$10 million for prison-building consultants;
-$2 million for garbage trucks;
-$200,000 each for Iraqis in a witness protection program;
-$100 million for hundreds of criminal investigators; and
-$400 million for two prisons, at a cost of nearly $50,000 per bed!
I doubt very seriously that most Americans would approve of their tax dollars being used to fund these projects in Iraq.
Criticism of this foreign aid spending in Iraq is not restricted to the political left. Conservative groups and politicians are increasingly angry at the administration’s exorbitant spending. For example, Congressman Zach Wamp of Tennessee sits on the Appropriations committee, which is responsible for all spending bills. He has a modest idea: insist the reconstruction money be paid back as a loan when Iraq’s huge oil reserves resume operation. Similarly, Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona wants to offset every dollar spent reconstructing Iraq with spending cuts in others areas, especially given the amount of wasteful pork in the federal budget. But the White House is adamantly opposed to both ideas. Why is a supposedly conservative administration resisting even the slightest attempts at fiscal restraint?
We have embarked on probably the most extensive nation-building experiment in history. Our provisional authority seeks nothing less than to rebuild Iraq’s judicial system, financial system, legal system, transportation system, and political system from the top down- all with hundreds of billion of US tax dollars. We will all pay to provide job-training for Iraqis, while more and more Americans find themselves out of work. We will pay to secure the Iraqi borders, while our own borders remain porous and vulnerable. We will pay for housing, health care, social services, utilities, roads, schools, jails, and food in Iraq, leaving American taxpayers with less money to provide these things for themselves at home. We will saddle future generations with billions in government debt. The question of whether Iraq is worth this much to us is one lawmakers should answer now by refusing to approve another nickel for nation building.
Victory requires that no one willing and able to make even the tiniest positive contribution may sell his life cheaply. Look at Solzhenitsyn, who caused such damage to the enemy. If he had insisted on dying _Gulag_ would never have been written.
The first thing that must be done is to allow ourselves to see the situation we are in clearly. Only then can we act prudently. We are in a post - Republic, very late Enlightenment era, where money is what comes from a government printing press or computer entry. The Constitution, against the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, is whatever nine unelected lawyers in DC say it is. Soon we will have computerized voting, and a few keystrokes with the right password and any vote count desired is delivered. As Stalin pointed out, "It doesn't matter who votes, it matters who counts the votes."
We have to deal with the world as it is, and not confuse reality with our hopes and dreams.
To buy cars on time, houses on mortgage, to "invest" in the stock market, to demand the "right" to health care and social security pensions.
This culture of ours is the most lethal of all of our weapons, vastly more effective than any number of nukes, and will spread from Iraq throughout the Moslem world.
The West being rich the Moslem can stand, by saying to himself that he is more virtuous than any American and that the American's have stolen all of their wealth from people like himself. To see Iraq "prosperous and peaceful" would shatter his world view. Total demoralization follows. Islam would no longer be of world - historical importance.
It would be wastefull to hand it out for nothing, and instead the money will pay for many things for many people, reliable electricity, roads, drinking water, sewage systems, millions of well paying jobs, and Home Depots, car dealerships, McDonalds, furniture and appliance stores, internet and cell phone vendors where thy can spend their money. Televise American television dubbed in Arabic, a hundred channels on the cable that carries the broadband for their entertainment.
They wouldn't stand a chance.
"do you think it can be saved"? - no.
"do you think it's OK"? Do I like what has happened? no. Do I see it as inevitable when I look at history in detail since the 16th Century and the American experience in particular? With sadness, yes.
"what are you doing about it?" - As each generation must, we must build from the rubble left behind by the previous generations, sifting usable bricks and stone, steel and copper, out of the waste of old dreams. Socialism was tremendously powerful in this country from the end of WWI, and the lust for socialism can be seen in the Union side of the war of 1861. There is a lot needing building. Hundreds of years of effort have proved to be fruitless. I try to get people to see that the basic structure of their everyday lives has changed, and has to change more. I am afraid and nearly certain that instead of changing how they see themselves and reality people will not change their hearts and minds soon enough, and will elect a "man on horseback" who will "save them from repression and servitude" to the "soulless Corporations" and the "rich" when the times go bad. Pretty bad times at the moment, actually, and wait for the inflation - deflation - inflation and unemployment on the horizon.
I raise my family, and try to prepare them by trying to make them think and see clearly, and work on the hearts and minds of those around me. Many illusions will have to go. Faith in "democracy" and the essential goodness of human nature will be lost. So will the hope that Government can be "good." Perhaps government as "neccesary" or "unavoidable" will replace government as "Uncle Sugar" combined with "a fountain of justice."
This sounds pessimistic but is actually not. Something good cannot be built until we stop trying to make the impossible happen. There are many positive possibilities. The Iraq business, the Empire, the dilemma we face generally, could have been avoided. We will come to see that this is so. What we now see are the fruits of hubris, as the ancient Greeks put it. The Tower to Heaven falls, Babel, and the people are dispersed into separate languages and tribes.
There will be an attempt to revive the ancient traditions of our culture, Duty, Honor, Country, as MacArthur put it, and it will succeed. I work toward this. Whether the future generations can build something good upon the foundation we the living leave behind depends on how well we build, but in the end will be up to them.
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