Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Full Employment: As we watch the pictures on our television screens the reality of the entire Middle East becomes apparent.  There are way too many young men with nothing to do but resist authority.  Whether those pictures be of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank or pictures of Iraq.

Young men with nothing to do are a problem.  Let me suggest this is the reason all my friends who have raised teen age boys have made it their summer's goal to keep their children busy.  Band camp, boy scouts, soccer camp.  Teenagers and young men need plenty of activity during the day so that they will fall into bed and sleep at night.  In order to become a member of society a man must have a job so that he can marry and become the head of his own household.

The Bush plan has been to hire U.S. corporations to rebuild Iraq.  These U.S. contractors have brought employees from around the world to drive the trucks and operate the heavy equipment.  One of the first kidnap victims was a truck driver from Louisiana.   Iraqis know how to drive trucks.  We must quit insulting these people we are trying to help by inferring they are backward or incapable of taking care of themselves.

We need look no further than the grandeur of Saddam's many palaces to see the ability of the Iraqi people to rebuild their own nation. Our plan should be to let Iraqis rebuild their own Country.  Let the citizens of Louisiana rebuild their own cities.

There really is little time to implement this plan as many educated Iraqi citizens are leaving the Country.  In order for Iraq to ever achieve stability it will be necessary for them to have doctors, nurses, teachers, professors and engineers to do that work.  Once those people have fled the area and made new lives for themselves in other parts of the World the job of rebuilding will be made much more difficult requiring more money and probably an additional generation of poverty and instability.

Create a trust fund: A fund to be used by the Iraqis to rebuild their infrastructure.  They will need schools, hospitals, power stations, transportation systems, airports, and the employment that will be created building this will keep the economy moving and the Iraqis employed for many years.  The trust fund would be established by the United States.  We are currently spending $80Billion a year to fight this insurgency.  Instead, we place $25 Billion into a trust fund that Iraqis can draw from.  They will receive more funds the next year if they pass external audits, one conducted by our GAO and the other conducted by a second institution such as the United Nations.  

Secure the perimeter: Our current administration tells us constantly that it is foreign insurgents that are the problem.  They are being drawn to Iraq to fight against the Infidel (meaning us).  It is then our responsibility to inhibit the flow of these people across the border and to draw the insurgents away from the population centers so that these cities can rebuild and have the  peace and the "better life" our President promised them.

Looking at the topographical maps of the area,  it can be seen that Iraq is surrounded on three sides by flat open expanses of desert.  It has common borders with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria in this open terrain.   A 20 or 30 mile buffer zone could be established which could be patrolled with drones, helicopter, foot patrols.  It would be a kill zone.  Any one crossing outside of a militarily controlled check point would be killed.   We need to consider the ability to control these borders first.

First the easy ones.  Kuwait has a very small border and a very large military presence.  This border should already be secure.  Second, we must engage Saudi Arabia.   Most of the terrorists involved with September 11 were from Saudi Arabia.  The Saudi Government contributed 50,000 troops to Desert Storm and  has been training troops in order to control their homegrown followers of Osama Bin Laden.   It is in their best interest to secure the border they have in common with Iraq in order to maintain peace inside their borders.  In theory, this should be made easier by the very close relationship the Bush family has with the House of Saud.

Jordan shares a small border with Iraq.   Though they did not participate in Desert Storm, the instability in the region caused by the U.S. invasion of Iraq has brought terrorist attacks to their cities.  They do have reason to secure their portion of the border with Iraq.

Syria is also instrumental in securing the perimeter of Iraq.  The two nations share a long border. Syria contributed 17,000 troops to the first U.S. v. Iraq conflict, Desert Storm.  The goal of regaining the cooperation of Syria in stabilizing the area has been made more difficult because of Bush 43's insistence that King President Bashar al-ASAD has been aiding the insurgents in crossing the common border between Iraq and Syria.  Which is probably difficult for al-Asad to hear since he has helped with CIA renditions and secret "interrogations".   Since our military is at full capacity for warfare now, it should be our policy to get one nation stabilized before we begin any other nation building efforts.  We need al-Asad's cooperation.  President Bush 41 and James Baker were able to work with Syria before.  It should be our policy to re-engage in an constructive way rather than making accusations that only cause further problems in the area.

The Northern border of Iraq is shared with Turkey which is another problem this Bush administration chose to ignore in its rush to war.  Turkey does have a very large interest in protecting its border but this is combined by its own Kurdish history.  To explain this problem we should refer to Bush 41's book and his explanation of why he did not take out Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War.  He knew from experience.  President Bush 41 knew because of a lifetime of studying history and the interaction of the middle east that to take out Saddam Hussein would destabilize the entire region.  And, in what will be a problem for this Country and the rest of the World for many years to come,  his son has proven him correct.  The Saudi's are being attacked by forces within their own Country who want to over throw the Saud family.  Jordan, Syria and Iran are all suffering from terrorist attacks aimed at destabilizing their current governments.  It is a pity for the World that Bush the Younger chose to follow the inner voices he heard through prayer rather than the knowledge his father tried to impart to the World through his own experience and extensive knowledge.

But if we are to believe this Bush administration the problem of insurgents does not come from the North and we will first have to secure the borders that they are entering through.  Bringing us to Iran.  To discuss Iran it is necessary to review a bit of the history of the United States and our interactions with Persia.  The borders of much of the Middle East were settled in the Peace Agreement at the end of World War I between the United States, Great Britain, and France.  Although the leaders of the allied powers knew very little about the tribes that roamed the area, they chose to receive very little input from the inhabitants in  the regions.  This is fundamental to  the problems we are seeing today. The Allies drew borders and appointed rulers that were thought to be friendly to the Western powers.  The area that we now call Iran was largely drawn from the former Persian Empire.  This is important:  Iranians are Persians; Iraqi's are Arabs.  They have different historic and cultural backgrounds.

The Allied powers appointed the Shah of Iran to be the head of State.  The Shah allowed all the oil in Iran to be owned by Great Britain.  Of course the Shah got a cut of about 5% of the oil profits but little went to bettering the lives of the ordinary Iranians.  In 1953 the Iranians had a democratic election which was won by Mohammad Mossadegh.  Mossadegh nationalized the oil.  Claiming that the oil belonged not to the people of Great Britain but to the people of Iran and the revenues were needed by the people in Iran.  So Great Britain asked President Eisenhower to over throw the democratically elected leader of Iran.  The CIA and, in particular, its agent, Kermit Roosevelt, instigated a revolution, overthrew Mossadegh and returned the Peacock throne to the Shah of Iran in 1953.

It was that CIA instigated revolution which gave rise to the extremists in Iran who united and over through the Shah and kidnaped the employees at the United States embassy in 1979. Iran became a theocracy.  But the undercurrents of the Great Persian culture dating from 9,000 years ago mandate that the leader of the Persian region must be ethical in his rule.  It is those ethic undertones that have lead toward greater participation in the government in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Now the Iranians have democratic elections in which all citizens are allowed to vote.

Unfortunately for our current situation the United States is not only responsible for overthrowing democracy in Iran in 1953.  The Government of Ronald Reagan supported Saddam Hussein when he came to power in 1979 and provided assistance to Hussein in the very first Gulf War.  This was Hussein's war of aggression against Iran and it continued from 1980 to 1988.  When we see pictures of the historic handshake between Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein in 1982, we should be reminded of the assistance our government provided to Hussein even while he was using poison gas on his own people.  Iran has many reasons not to trust us.   If Iran wants to take revenge on Iraq for the last war between them there will be little we can do.  Again, President Bush 41 warned us and we failed to pay attention.  
Iran was moving toward a liberal democracy.  That changed with the last election in Iran.  Unlike the citizens of the United States, Iranians know their history and are well aware that the United States overthrew its democratic government and supported Saddam Hussein.  Now like its rivals, the United States, and Israel,  it wants nuclear weapons to protect itself from aggression.  We have truly taken a giant step backwards.  Our presence in Iraq does nothing to improve this situation.  

So what type of cooperation can we expect from Iran to seal the borders with Iraq in order for Iraq to rebuild?  Other than the fact that there has not been an alliance in this area since the end of the Ottoman Empire they have little to hold them together.  The Persian and the Arab cultures are very different.  But if Iran wants revenge on the United States for our meddling in their affairs for the past century there would no place easier than to attack our troops in Iraq.  This is not a reason to stay in Iraq.  It is one more reason to leave.  If the Iranians are looking for revenge it is too easy to get it against our troops in Iraq.  Best they not be there.  If Iran is looking for revenge against Iraq for the war they fought between 1980 and 1988, there is little we can do and again, since we supported Iraq we would be making matters worse by staying.

The current Bush administration has done nothing to improve relations with Iran.  Since he placed them on his list of the "axis of evil" their policies have moved in opposition to our interests in the area. Because of our interference in their Government in the past and because of our current policy of referring to them as evil we should expect no cooperation with Iran.  But because our history and our policy we should assume our presence in Iraq will not improve the situation for Iraqis.

We continue to ask President Bush for a plan.  First a War plan.  His war plan did not secure the conventional weapons in Iraq that are now being used against our troops.  Then we asked for a reconstruction plan.  His reconstruction plan was Haliburton.  But very little reconstruction has taken place because there is no security.   And now we ask for an exit plan.  He does not plan to leave.

Our president continues to demand victory.  But our troops have already achieved victory.  We removed Saddam Hussein from power and now have him in a court room standing trial for his acts of butchery against his own people.  What we need now is a strategy for winning the peace.  The President insists that staying the course is the only solution.  The history of the British and our own history should lead us to believe differently.  The United States won the war against Saddam but we cannot win the peace between the rival factions within Iraq.  There are hatreds going back more generations that the United States has been in existence.  Only the Iraqis themselves have the ability to determine what their future will be.

We can and must offer them assistance because we have been part of the problem.  The plan we have outlined here: full employment; securing the perimeter; and funding the reconstruction of the national infrastructure will be much less expensive than continuing the war.   By spending less on bombs we will have more to offer in order to help rebuild and establish the peace.   By drawing insurgents out of the center of Iraq we will give  the Iraqi people the ability  to govern themselves and regain the respect this great nation so richly deserves.

Acknowledge our enemies goals: Osama bin Laden wants us out of the Islamic holy land.  He is persistent.  It took two attacks to bring down the World Trade Center.  He has already attacked our military by sea: the U.S.S. Cole; by air: the Pentagon.  Now he has our military in a very fortuitous place for him.  Surrounded by enemy forces, on the enemies home ground, half way around the world from us.  We are in a very unenviable position.  It is time to leave Iraq to the Iraqis.