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contents of this diary - contents special topics written about - topics First entry this page: this page: first entry Hugh Cook - his blog: latest entry |
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From the website: How much more money? Well, here's the bad news:- This is a bad combination: more money needed and a majority of the taxpayers evidently unwilling to pay it. (If a survey says that the majority thinks that the USA is spending too much money in Iraq, it necessarily follows that spending even more money won't be popular.McCain, who is leading a bipartisan House and Senate delegation throughout the Middle East, said Friday that he estimates the United States needs to add $13 billion to $15 billion for reconstruction alone, "as quick as we can spend it." He said the failure to restore basic services more widely could lead to more violence. Online right now there's an article by Ali Abunimah, an opinion piece apparently originally from The Chicago Tribune, 22 August 2003. Right now it's on the site:- at:- electroniciraq.net/news/1055.shtml Abunimah argues that the chief problem is political. According to him, the biggest issue is not boots and dollars. Rather, it's how the Iraqi people feel. Abunimah's solution is for the US to achieve political legitimacy in Iraq by doing a deal with the United Nations:Following Tuesday's horrifying bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) led the calls for the United States to consider sending more troops to Iraq. McCain, in Baghdad when the attack happened, said, "After an event like this we have to evaluate whether we have enough people, whether we have the right kind of people and whether we are spending enough money." McCain supported the war in Iraq, but even those who opposed it could agree with that sentiment. Yet while such a re-evaluation is an understandable response, it misses the bigger point. However, even if some American administration eventually decides that it wants to take that route, I don't think it works, for two reasons.The U.S. will give up much or most of its authority in Iraq in exchange for an international commitment of troops and resources to a transition plan and timetable to restore Iraq to independence. First, nobody in the international community is particularly keen on dying in Iraq. And, second, taxpayers are pretty much the same everywhere: if dollar extraction time arrives, then the sentiments of American taxpayers are going to be echoed elsewhere. Personally, I think that Iraq is going to end up like Somalia, the site of the Black Hawk Down military disaster in Mogadishu. (Incidentally, while I haven't seen the movie, I have read the book - if you want a "how it really is" insight into streetfighting hell, then I think this is the book.) The Black Hawk Down disaster happened in 1993. In 1995, the Americans pulled out. So what's happened since then? After all, it's been almost eight full years. Out of curiosity, I just did a search for news on Somalia, and found this:- Parenthetically, the english.peopledaily.com site has an article giving an idea of how the People's Republic of China views Japan's projected expansion of its overseas military activities ... the view is negative. The article is:-The African Union has hinted at a possibility of deploying peacekeeping mission to Somalia to enforce a peace deal it hopes to reach soon in the east African country. and is titled:- Analysis of Japan 2003 White Paper on Defense Anyway - as stated above, I'm picking that the future for Iraq looks something like Somalia. The fact that Iraq is a rich country (at least in terms of its natural resources) does not make a difference. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is also a rich country, and that hasn't prevented chaos from prevailing in that country. There's an article on that unhappy situation on the website:- The article is:- Chaos and cannibalism under Congo's bloody skies dated Sunday August 17, 2003 and online at the moment at:- observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1020315,00.html The article talks of the unfortunate fate of two United Nations observers (the headline quoted above indicates what happened) then comments:- That's the thing: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire - capital Kinshasa) is huge and populous, with over fifty million people.No inquiry has been conducted into why the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, has been abandoned like those two UN officers. (Confusingly, there is a smaller African nation called the Republic of the Congo. The capital is Brazzaville and the population is less than three million.) But we (the affluent taxpayers of the world and our governments) have pretty much given up on the Congo. The article quoted above enlarges on this theme. Four million people dead in the last five years. Two years ago, at a Labour Party conference, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said:- As the article notes:-'The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world. But if the world as a community focused on it, we could heal it. And if we don't, it will become deeper and angrier.' The 'scar' is now a volcanic tropical ulcer. Last month the UN Security Council finally voted to impose an arms embargo on Congo. But Britain and the US stood in the way of extending an embargo to include Rwanda and Uganda, which back the militias slaughtering civilians in eastern Congo. allafrica.com at:- allafrica.com/congo_kinshasa Since the affluent world (the world to which I belong) has pretty much abandoned both Somalia and the Congo, what is to stop a similar fate happening to Iraq? America is not going to pull out of Iraq in the near future because George Bush is determined to hang tough. However, the lessons of history (South Vietnam, for example, and Somalia) indicate that America (understandably) is not inclined to spend blood and treasure for zero reward, not indefinitely. Right now, there's a really pessimistic entry on the website of the Baghdad blogger Salam says, in part:- (The square brackets [that is, the square parentheses] are as in the original.)I am starting to believe that the chaos we will go thru the next 5 or 10 years is part of the price we will *have* to pay to have our freedom. This Beirut-ification is the way to learn how we should live as a free country and respect each other; it is just too painful to admit. It is too painful to have to admit that the [burn it down to build it up] process is what we will have to go thru. Any time I write on any problem, I feel the urge to come forward with my own solution - to throw in my own ten cents' worth of "If I ruled the world." But on this occasion I don't have a solution to offer. All I have (for what it's worth) is the vision that I'm seeing in my crystal ball. Killing leading to killing and then more killing leading to more killing after that. Technically, I think that McCain is right. The technical solution is more dollars and more boots on the ground. Given enough troops to ensure stability, and given enough dollars to get things up and running again, the situation in Iraq would start to become workable. However, the costs of that technical solution do not look politically doable, so I don't think it will be done (although undoubtedly token efforts will be made in that direction.) And, absent security, and absent money, the politics are really irrelevant. |
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