January 17, 2003

POST-WAR IRAQ: NEVER MIND WINNING THEIR HEARTS AND MINDS

JUST GIVE THE IRAQIS JOB OPPORTUNITIES AND A FREE MARKET

AND THEIR HEARTS AND MINDS WILL FOLLOW

An opportunity of a century. Not since the end of the Second World War when America alone occupied Imperial Japan and transformed it into a modern, democratic, capitalist nation-state from what it had been for centuries—an isolated, reverential, hide-bound, under-capitalized state ruled by an emperor and his court. It took a couple of generations but the Japanese were hard workers and very fast learners—and then came the Honda and the Japanese began to beat the pants off industrial America. Now they are Americans themselves—scientists, bankers, businessmen, big-league pitchers. Would you have believed that back in 1945?

Would you believe in 2003 that something similar could happen in Iraq, and that in forty or fifty years the Iraqi national sport might be baseball?

If there is a war, and if we free the Iraqis by armed occupation, we will indeed have an opportunity of a century.

But let’s get a few basic things straight. It will take longer than the eighteen months that the White House optimistically projects. It could take a decade or more—but that needn’t be burdensome, expensive or difficult. If we administer the oil wells, in addition to giving the Iraqi people their own patrimony for the welfare of the country, rather than for presidential palaces or the development of weapons of mass destruction, a portion could be returned to the United States for the costs of occupation and military administration.

In addition, the military need only use a small fraction of its professional army for the work of occupation and military police. The bulk of the force could be mustered from our military reserves for periods of three or four month rotations. This would free our fighting army for other military needs and give our reserves a training experience that would be neither dangerous nor unfairly prolonged.

This unique opportunity in nation building would require as much unilateral decision making as possible—as was the case with Japan immediately after the end of World War II. It would indeed be a formidable diplomatic challenge to keep the United Nations and France and Russia in particular from meddling.

If all of the above were accomplished—a unilateral occupation force under control of the United States paid for by part of the proceeds from Iraqi oil—and the American people were comfortable with the challenge of giving the gift of American political values and economic ideas to the Iraqi people at no cost to us, then the first order of business would be to pacify the country and bring stability, law, and order with as little disturbance to the Iraqi people as possible. This, of course, would mean helping to restore the country’s infrastructure.

The essential features of this nation building challenge would be to plant the seeds of American values and nurture them until they are not only viable but sturdy enough to grow and propagate themselves. If we export these ideas and methods to the Iraqi people and help them adapt and fine tune the system so that it fits their own cultural values, then at some point in time—five, ten or fifteen years from now—the United States can fold its tent and go home with the feeling that it has enriched a people and been enriched in return.

The trick is to do good by doing well, and to demonstrate that it is possible to do so by using American ideas and methods. By planting the seeds of democracy and freedom to choose in a free market it would be possible to produce enough fruit for both America and Iraq to profit and prosper from the seed money—the private capital supplied by American and Iraqi bankers and protected by governmental guarantees and subsidies, American and Iraqi, to reduce risk. American and Iraqi businessmen would provide the skill and imagination to create large and small businesses which would give Iraqi citizens jobs and a regular income. And at some point in time these privately held businesses could become public and owned and operated for the benefit of their shareholders as well as their workers.

In order for this commercial development to occur we would have to help the Iraqis create a democratic constitution akin to ours, which would substitute for secular and religious dictatorship—no Saddam, no king, and no religious courts—the rule of laws. Then a modern meritocratic bureaucracy could be formed to administer legal, political, and commercial institutions adopted by the people—a process that would be enhanced by the pursuit of commercial activity, but might take a generation or more. And it is from this cadre that eventually governmental leaders would emerge.

Parallel to law building and the development of modern commercial institutions, the United States should encourage the development—out of private and/or public funds—of western-style schools for all children and young people who wish them. Let the old schools compete with the new and see which wins. And businessmen must be encouraged to start western-style newspapers—even English-language ones—television stations, and computer networks. Let the new media compete with the old and see which wins….

….Now fast forward to 2053, and turn to the headlines on the sports pages of the Tigris Times (owned by the Murdoch Corporation) and read that the Baghdad Dromedaries won the pennant of the Middle East League, and that Mohammed Mohammed (Momo to his fans) pitched a shut-out for the New York Yankees.