April 08, 2003

April 8, 2003

THE HORSEFEATHERS PLAN: WHAT TO DO UNTIL THOMAS JEFFERSON ARRIVES IN BAGHDAD

Yale Kramer

It is foolish to think that you can transform the values and mores of 1300 years of Arab culture in a few years of military occupation by imposing democracy from the top down.

DEMOCRACY FROM THE BOTTOM UP

A more realistic possibility for some degree of gradual change in Iraq in the direction of Western and democratic societies might be the creation of bottom-up institutions which give something valuable to the Iraqi people without taking too much of their old life away from them. The problem is that they don’t know that they yearn for liberty and freedom and that what has kept them enslaved for so long are their own tribal ways to which they are so attached, and which they must, sooner or later, give up or change.

After a period of military stabilization, during which the Coalition forces can mop up the regular and irregular forces left over from the Saddam regime, get rid of the WMD, identify who the good guys and the bad guys are, provide humanitarian aid, and repair some of the infra-structural damage, the HORSEFEATHERS PLAN will be ready for implementation.

FORT APACHE, IRAQ

It is a well known fact that after a war the victors establish a more or less permanent presence in the conquered land. The American Army and Air Force has had a garrison in Germany for almost fifty years, which until recently was welcomed by the Germans. We have a Marine/Naval base on a long-term lease in Guantonamo, Cuba, completely surrounded by our enemy. We have had a large Army base in South Korea protecting the demilitarized zone and the people of Seoul for forty years. These were and are important strategic points in our modern view of our place in the world.

What we should do is to remove our garrison from Germany, which no longer welcomes it. It was necessary during the cold war but is not important strategically at present. And we should remove our air base from Saudi Arabia. It has recently become an embarrassment for both the Saudis and us. The removal will enable us to deal with the Saudis more realistically, putting political pressure on them when it is necessary.

Instead we must establish a naval base in the south of Iraq, on the Persian Gulf, an air base in the north of Iraq to replace the Saudi base, and in central Iraq a large Army base. These bases would be a strategic asset for the Central Command if ever a military force is needed in the Middle East or South Central Asia. Their presence would not only stabilize the overheated politics of the new Iraq, but the whole region as well.

In addition, our forces would be able to guarantee the safety of the Iraqi people and their oil fields from incursions of hostile neighbors or terrorists. In a sense we would be a mercenary army and the Iraqi government would be our client. One major advantage to both the Iraqis and the U.S. would be that it would save the Iraqi government the great cost of raising its own army, and some of that saving might be used to defer the cost of running the U.S. garrison.

The semi-permanent emplacement of a U.S. military garrison in Iraq is the lynchpin of the HORSEFEATHERS PLAN. It supports and integrates the other components of the plan.

THE OIL, AH YES, THE OIL

In the old days they used to say “winner take all,” or “to the victors belong the spoils.” In fact, even today it is still true in the Arab world. But in the high-minded world of the Anglosphere, where Western values are dominated by Judeo-Christian ideals and politesse we still must disguise the use of power in the assertion of national interests as acts motivated by altruism—the ‘liberation of Iraq.’

Let me see, how can I say this without seeming…too…unilateral. Before the war we were accused by France of really being interested only in getting hold of Iraqi oil. It’s not surprising that France—the whited-sepulcher of all time—should say this, since its oil companies have been in a conspiracy with Saddam to steal oil assets from the Iraqi people for the last twenty years.

So let’s not be shy or shamed. We’re going to be fair to the Iraqi people for a change, but we’re going to charge them for reconstructing Iraq and for protecting them and their oil assets.

What’s most important, though, is that we must set up an Iraqi Oil Commission which will be chaired by the Americans and contain members of the coalition that actually sent men and materiel. The purpose of this commission is to administer Iraqi oil income so that it goes to the Iraqi people and not to despotic leaders or corrupt politicians. It will administer current assets and develop future assets.

But its two most important functions will be to maintain the unity of the country and de-Arabize oil in the Middle East.

Since the oil fields are not equally distributed in the country, but massed in the north and the south, the temptation is always present for the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south to run off with these assets and secede from the country and finance their own independence. In our plan all the income flows through the Commission and is dispersed to each section on a per capita basis. Each sector will get its rightful share. This scheme guarantees national unity and the legitimacy of the Commission is in turn guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. military.

The second reason for centralizing Iraq’s oil assets and entrusting them to an independent Commission is to dissociate Iraq from OPEC, which has demonstrated, since its inception, a tendency to use the oil resources of the Arab world en masse as political weapons against American foreign policy. Up to now we have depended on our pseudo-friends, the Saudis, to protect us from OPEC. Now we can tell them to suck a lemon if they don’t like our policy.

A SWISS CONFEDERATION? YOU MUST BE JOKING

Remember Orson Welles’ famous speech in The Third Man, in which he says “…you know what the fellow said: In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed; and they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”

It was a great line, but not quite true—at least not the part about brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace in Switzerland. Nowadays we tend to think of Switzerland as stable as the Alps and the Swiss Franc, the symbol of peace and neutrality, and a country that runs like a clock without having to be wound. That’s not the way it always was. In fact until 1848 it was as warlike and unstable as the rest of Europe for the previous thousand years. It had constant wars with Austria, France, and Italy. It had countless internal and civil wars amongst its own cantons. Until 1848 its 26 cantons were sovereign states, each with its own currency, laws, customs, passports, etc.

Even today it can be divided into four distinct language sectors—French, Italian, German, and Romansh—twenty-six cantons, and within these, 3000 communes. Each of these is autonomous and Swiss citizenship can be conferred only by one or another of these communes.

The central government is relatively weak and controls tariffs, communications, transport, water conservation, the postal service, and the monetary system. The government is administered by the Federal Council, which is a seven member collegial board, an organization of equals with a rotating presidency, with each member presiding over a federal department. As though the U.S. cabinet administered the government without a president.

The real power over people’s everyday lives resides in the cantons and communes. They decide who votes, and for what; they decide on the criminal and civil code of each canton, and how much shall be spent and for what purposes.

When Napoleon conquered Switzerland he tried to impose French law on the Swiss. It was a complete disaster and lasted only as long as Napoleon. The Swiss are a stubborn, proud people and over the past 700 years have developed mores and values which they prize. And that is what the organization of the Swiss government reflects—a jealous guarding of the values and cultures they wish in their respective autonomous cantons, and an acknowledgment of some degree of central regulation as a necessity in a modern world.

One could do a lot worse than use a Swiss paradigm for the new Iraq. Four states—a Shiite state in the south, a Kurdish state in the north, a Sunni state in the center, and a religiously mixed state in the city of Baghdad. Each of these states would develop and control the political and ethical values of the citizens of each state without much influence from the central government. The people of each respective community would choose their communal leaders as well as those who would represent them in a central constituent body.

The central government would look after functions that require a nationwide purview—commercial codes, monetary system, water control, transportation and roads, etc.

MR. SMITH GOES TO BAGHDAD—ADAM SMITH, THAT IS

The next most important component of THE HORSEFEATHERS PLAN is to bring a free market to Iraq and to do what is necessary to encourage capital formation and entrepreneurship there. This must be understood as a long-term project—the creation of business institutions completely independent of governmental politics.

The array of instruments and institutions would be too numerous to specify here but some of the most important would be such things as a modern western central banking system that regulates interest rates, a code governing private property laws and liability, a uniform commercial code, incorporation and contract laws. None of these requires the formation of a specific form of elected government. These institutions would be regulatory agencies run by technocrats and bureaucrats. They would be the most important part of a central government but would have little or no political power over the federated states.

A FREE PRESS

We must support the installation of a free press—in all the media—by encouraging private enterprise through some degree of government subsidy. The Iraqis must have access to The Honeymooners re-runs, Law and Order, and Fox News if they are to understand America.

THE HORSEFEATHERS PLAN: DEMOCRACY FROM THE BOTTOM UP

1. An American military presence that guarantees regional stability, oil assets, and business development.

2. American administration of oil assets that prevents internal fragmentation and external incursion. It also de-Arabizes control over Middle-Eastern oil.

3. Creation of a government with a weak central administration and strong federated states that each determine their own culture.

4. Coalition encouragement of market and business oriented institutions, allowing democratic ideas to emerge from a prosperous bourgeois business community.

5. Subsidization of a private enterprise free press.