Missing the Point

I have some things I have to run and do, so this will be short, but I wanted to comment quickly on the whole controversy about the administration restricting reconstruction contracts to countries who supported the US position on the war.

Everybody is talking about how either this is justified, or how it is shooting ourselves in the foot by once again alienating allies, etc. I did even see one place (by David Adesnik at Oxblog) where it was discussed that those were the wrong arguments and it should all be about what is good for the Iraqi’s and the decision should be made on that basis. That gets close, but still misses the point.

Yes, making this decision one way or another potentially has a lot of impact on all sorts of things, pro and con, in terms of how this will effect the US, our allies, and Iraq in the future. And things can be said for both sides. (I personally think restricting the contracts is asinine.) But… the main problem, that I haven’t seen discussed (maybe I just missed it)… is that IT SHOULD NOT BE OUR DECISION.

Yes, it is too soon to turn over full control to the Iraqi’s. The current council is not elected, and has many issues. Security and borders and foreign policy are certainly not things that can be handed over yet. But reconstruction, and control of the oil production, etc, is CERTAINLY something that can and should be governed by Iraqi’s. It should not be people in the White House, Pentagon, or State Department who are deciding which contracts are given to who to put things back together in Iraq. It should be the Iraqi council.

If we feel some additional funding is needed beyond what can be raised in Iraq proper (which I’m sure is the case) then that funding should be provided, and there should of course be some oversight against blatant corruption and mis-direction of the funds. But at this point the decision making on many of these matters should be firmly in Iraqi hands.

The fact that at this point we retain control of such critical economic decisions just leaves a bad taste in ones mouth of “to the victor goes the spoils” rather than any sort of noble purposes which would be legitimate in our presence there.

OK. Back to doing the stuff I am supposed to be doing right now.