Letting Go of the Tar Baby
This proposed Exit Strategy is put forth in order to foster debate on the inevitable. And the sooner the quicker.
1. It is clear that there are certain “hot zones” in Iraq, and certain zones considered basically pretty safe. (The occasional act of guerrilla warfare, if it can be handled by local authorities, should be of little concern to us. Especially if we are not there. As a matter of fact, they have methods of dealing with local malcontents that have proven over the centuries to be more effective than anything we can bring ourselves to do.)
We need to arrange with the Kurds, for instance, that they will receive a large degree of autonomy, and an absence of American/Allied soldiers, IF they can succeed in maintaining a semblance of law and order. If it eases the pain, we can take 1/4 of the budget we were spending on occupying that quarter of the country, and place it in number of Swiss bank accounts. Award some of these to the rulers, at the end of one year, two years, etc., in exchange for a job well done. Think of it
as a Performance Bonus. If there are substantial Sunni areas that are more or less tranquil, then they get the same treatment. At that point, I anticipate that some of the Rednecks in the tank corps will start putting bumper stickers on their tanks that say, “If you ain’t occupied, you ain’t Shi’ite!” (Hey, I couldn’t resist.)
Incremental withdrawal allows us to bring home the National Guard first. They’ve been there WAY too long. When an act of terror, or a pattern of terror develops, if the locals can’t handle it, they can request our intervention, on a temporary basis, while they either restore order, or call an election and elect someone who can. We can fulfill those requests with “over the horizon technology”.
2. Distribute a short-barrelled 12 gauge shotgun, with 100 rounds of .00 buck shot, to the head of every household that demonstrates responsibility, and which can produce references within each neighborhood community. This is a great defensive weapon. It is just lousy as an offensive weapon. When the fundamentalist thugs come door to door, to collect their illegal protection money, a shotgun is more effective than anything else in “levelling the playing field,” to put it mildly. Offer to keep the quiet areas supplied with ammo each quarter. (Hey, what they do behind closed tents is their business. Don’t ask, don’t tell.)
3. Distribute a few million copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights (forget all the rest of the amendments) to every citizen in English and either Arabic or Kurdish. These seeds of the right kind of revolution just may bring a harvest of Liberty in a few generations. If not, well, we tried. (I would like to add the Bible to that list of recommended reading, but it might prove to be controversial.)
4. Explain to Iraq and the world that the oil is ours for the next 35-50 years or so, at which point, we’ll start gradually turning a percentage of it over to the sheiks who have the safest and most tranquil neighborhoods. This gives us the Strategic Oil Reserves that some have accused us of wanting, and it also pays for the war, thus bringing relief to the American Taxpayer. (Look, the average Iraqi citizen never got any of it at all, except in the form of cheap gasoline and tons of welfare passed out as political patronage. So don’t feel sorry for most of them — only the rich oil families. If you can.) (Do you think the Saudis are going to continue to fund radical Islamic terrorism around the world, when they think things through? This plan will work there just as well.)
In a short time, it is reasonable to expect that hungry Iraqis will be lining up for jobs in the Oil Sector, which we can easily fence off — take it out of future oil receipts — cost is no object. They can be housed in the Oil Sector, and go home on generous vacations with a fat paycheck. Those who work hard can make good money, and if some moron blows something up, well, all the survivors in that sector will be fired, and we’ll bring in Catholic Filipinos, or Animist Sudanese, or Indian Hindus or Catholic Mexicans who are currently illegally in the US. In other words, it will not be in their personal nor their national interest to commit crimes against their temporary Occupiers — indeed, it will prolong their misery. Then the locals can have something else upon which to focus their hatred — illegal immigrants, and renegade bombers. Imagine.
Over the next 35 years, it will be in the interest of the private oil companies (Halliburton, Zapata & Co.) who will want to continue to operate in the Oil Sector to train local young men, and maybe even women, by sending them to schools, (several of which are located in Oklahoma or Texas), to become Chemical and Petroleum Engineers (no liberal arts students need apply). If they peep anything in the way of ingratitude while studying as guests in our country, we send them home within 24 hours, keeping a high-tech biodata file on them, for permanent exclusion from employment or any other benefit from the USA. Those scholarships will “grease the skids”, so to speak, for a generation of well-educated professional Iraqis to help run their own country.
The beauty of this plan is that it helps save face for the Allied politicians who have stepped into something they don’t want to admit, and has only begun to smell. It is called, “a land war in Asia”. It is a virtual tar-baby, and I am proposing a doable strategy for letting go of that tar-baby.
Ask the man in the street if he cares if the People of Iraq have this fantasy we keep calling “democracy”. Which streets? Doesn’t matter. American streets, British streets, or Iraqi streets for that matter. Nobody really cares, so let’s quit
pretending. When they care, they can purchase their political liberty, with their blood, not ours.
5. Make it abundantly clear that the perks will go away, if local officials cannot contain local acts of violence. Take the money that was going to go to them, and give it to their worst enemies — no, wait! That might make their enemies come into their neighborhoods and blow things up, just to embarrass them. Okay, threaten to sponsor schools to teach girls to read and write and study business administration. Worse, we could threaten to broadcast American television programs via satellite, with Arabic subscripts. Far more effective than bombs and soldiers, if we want to destroy their society. In other words, exercise some creativity in how to motivate them and reward them for good behavior. It’s the carrot, rather than the stick approach.
Furthermore, if they can’t demonstrate some self-control rather quickly, then make it clear that we will allow a referendum amongst the Kurds and the Sunnis on the subject of total sovereignty. (We ought to do this anyway, but let’s use it first as a bargaining chip.)
6. Since every elected American official who voted for this debacle in Iraq had taken an oath of allegiance to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, (as opposed to voting the straight party line), how about we resolve to never invade a country that has not attacked us first, and against which we have not legally passed a Declaration of War? (Don’t start with me. Their is not a shred of evidence that the government of Iraq, nor the People of Iraq, attacked the USA on September 11, 2001. Nada. Zip. What we “thought” about WMD’s is not in the Constitution, neither explicitly nor implicitly.)
If a nation harbors terrorists, there are lots of things we can do to get their attention, including freezing their assets, freezing their immigration visas, diplomatic withdrawal, trade embargoes, letters of marque and reprisal, etc. “Let them eat the sand which is there.” (It’s an old joke. Just read it out loud a few times, and you’ll get it.)
What this does for us is manifold. First, it reduces our costs in terms of American lives. Second, it reduces our costs in terms of American taxpayer dollars. Third, it demonstrates to Iraqis that the way to get us to leave is to behave themselves or a little while. Fourth, it demonstrates to the world that we, the USA, have taken the High Moral Ground. Fifth, it reduces the political fall-out back home. This is a win-win-win-win-win situation.
We can argue over details, but you tell me one group of people who would not generally applaud such a plan (besides most journalists and many university professors, who won’t like anything proposed by anyone). If this plan takes 15 months, they can all be home in time to vote next year. Think about that. I don’t think most soldiers (or their families) would object — ask them.
I honestly don’t think most Iraqis would object, considering their alternatives — ask them.
I don’t think most French…, aah, who cares?
© Daniel D. New, Permission to copy, with credits, is hereby granted.-
