Article published April 21, 2008
Paying for Bush's war
"YOU break it, you bought it." Such was the aphorism employed by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell in the march to war five years ago to describe the responsibility the United States would have to shoulder after it invaded and occupied Iraq.
Now, as Mr. Powell's all-but-ignored realism has come painfully true to the tune of $600 billion or more, three members of the Senate are proposing to require Iraq to reimburse the U.S. for some of the costs incurred in destroying and then rebuilding Saddam Hussein's former kingdom.
With an eye toward spiking revenue from the worldwide runup in oil prices, Democrats Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Evan Bayh of Indiana are drafting legislation with Republican Susan Collins of Maine that would require Iraq to pick up some $153 million a month in U.S. military fuel costs and restrict future American reconstruction payments to Iraq to loans instead of grants.
The measure also would require Iraq to assume the $300 a month payments the United States has been making to each of 90,000 mostly Sunni "Sons of Iraq" to, in essence, not fight the United States. The payments - bribes might be a more accurate description - were in large part responsible for the temporary downturn in violence against U.S. troops in 2007 and early 2008.
The legislation is a reflection of congressional impatience with seemingly limitless war costs that have even hawks like Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham questioning whether Baghdad should start paying some U.S. combat costs with its projected oil surplus.
The idea is understandable and, most of all, is politically marketable to war-weary Americans, but it is unrealistic, and we won't be holding our breath for the dinars to flow toward Washington.More likely, the Iraqi response will be the equivalent in Arabic of, "Do we have this straight? You invade and destroy our country and now you want us to pay you - the richest nation in the world - to fix it?"
The sad truth is that, even with 140,000 troops on the ground, the United States can no longer force Iraq to bend to its will. For evidence, see accounts of the recently bungled "security crackdown" in Basra, commenced by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki without consultation with the U.S. military. Or the reported $236 million secret arms deal with Serbia, negotiated by a few Iraqi officials last September, also without U.S. knowledge.
This is the nasty endgame in Iraq that President Bush failed to foresee or plan for. With Americans complaining of killer gasoline prices at home, it's increasingly difficult for political leaders in Washington to justify paying billions in U.S. dollars not only to fight but also to rebuild roads, hospitals, and power lines when Iraq's oil wealth is multiplying.
Indeed, perhaps we are back to the future, when Mr. Bush and his optimistic neoconservative warriors predicted that war reconstruction easily could be financed from Iraqi oil. But, of course, that was when they cavalierly projected that the war would cost only about $60 billion - total.
We broke it, we bought it. We've paid the better part of a trillion dollars, not to mention more than 4,000 lives. All the more reason for the United States to get out of Iraq quickly and stop further bleeding.
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