THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING
Iraq viceroy Paul Bremer has announced that the Iraq occupation and re-construction will cost "tens of billions" of dollars over the next several years. $2 billion ($2,000,000,000) to meet current electricity needs. $16 billion ($16,000,000,000) over the next four years to deliver clean water. Then there's the $4 billion ($4,000,000,000) A MONTH that the Pentagon is spending on ongoing military operations. As I've said before, this is why the Europeans got out of the Empire business. It was too dang expensive.

Bremer poo-poo'ed more United Nations' involvement. "What exactly is it that happens on the ground that makes things better if the U.N. is in charge of reconstruction?" Bremer said. "How does the situation on the ground get better?"

No wonder Washington is having such difficulty trying to spread around the bill.

The answer of course is that the UN has far more experience in "nation building." They successfully did it in Mozambique and East Timor. Cambodia has its problems but it's certainly a safer place than it was 15 years ago before the UN was involved. Despite many difficulties, they're goign in the right direction in former hellholes like Angola and Sierra Leone. Further, the more the UN is involved, the more the expenses are shared.

The US has very little experience in "nation building" precisely because the concept was long maligned and mocked by the foreign policy establishment. The US last major attempt at nation building was over a half century ago. And in West Germany, it was dealing with a population much of whom actually had memories of life under a liberal democratic system.

So as a result, we're going to have a record deficit. We are going to spend tens of BILLIONS of dollars re-building Iraq's infrastructure but we "can't afford" to improve access to health care, we "can't afford" improving public transportation, we "can't afford" increased aid for college students and we "can't afford" to upgrade our electricity grid to benefit the American people.

I don't object to us helping out in Iraq. But the administration's intransigent unilateralism has alienated our allies and made it so few others with deep pockets wants to help us out.

But now that we've committed irreversibly ourself to Iraq, it's too late to pull out. We made the mess worse in the short term, so we have to clean it up for the medium- and long-term. We charged ourselves with the divine mission to save Iraq, we have to finish the job. No matter how many tens of billions of our taxpayer dollars are going to subsidize corporate welfare for American defense and reconstruction-related companies. But hey, most Americans were gung ho about the war so I guess they can't complain.

That still hasn't stopped some formerly pro-war people from making these complaints. Nor has it stopped some of them from saying we have too many casualties in Iraq and we must bring the troops home immediately.

Maybe next time they want to launch us into a nice little war, they'll stop beating their chests and slandering the "long-haired freaky people" long enough to consider the potential consequences BEFOREHAND. Not everyone who urges caution is automatically unpatriotic.


[On a totally coincidental note, you can also read the article shockingly entitled "Haliburton's deals greater than thought" by clicking here]