Dems wary of Iraq reconstruction cost
Members of a Senate committee that voted against President Bush’s Iraq plan said Thursday they also are wary of pouring more money into rebuilding while the security situation is so dire.
This is a bold, forward-thinking move by the new Democratic Congress. It makes perfect sense: what’s the point of rebuilding the infrastructure to provide basic necessities like electricity and sanitation? Why build schools, or hospitals, or orphanages? They will just give the terrorists more things to blow up.
Sure, the Iraqi people are angry that we invaded their country and ruined their already miserable lives. Are they going to be any less angry if they don’t have to wait in line for 3 days to get a gallon of fuel oil to cook food for their children? Of course not. The Iraqis’ desire to take up arms against Americans has nothing to do with the fact that they feel hopeless and helpless, without even the most basic necessities of life.
When a 14-year-old boy makes the choice to blow himself up in a Baghdad cafe, that decision is in no way informed by his perception of Americans as doing nothing but harm to his country and his family.
His decision probably wouldn’t be any different if, instead of kicking down his door, raping his sister, and shooting his father, the Americans had given him, for example, “hope” or “cool, drinkable water.”
Instead of trying to do good, the smartest move is for America to just sit back and let the insurgency reduce the entire country to a smoldering pile of rubble. The sooner they do that, the sooner we can give Halliburton a $200 billion no-bid contract to pave over the entire country and turn it into a parking lot for Disneyland Tehran (coming Spring 2009).
Bush says the troops are needed to provide security for rebuilding efforts. … On Thursday, Republicans and Democrats told a State Department official they are concerned the extra money could fuel corruption[.]
This is an excellent point that needs to be taken seriously. Why send billions of dollars to be lost to corruption in Iraq, when those billions could just as easily be lost to corruption here at home?
Think of the thousands we’d save on postage alone!
“Some of us have become very skeptical of the capacity — our capacity to organize this and the capacity to actually implement it,” said Sen. Joseph Biden, the committee chairman
Senator Biden, as you know, is also the sponsor of the We Concede That We Are Hopelessly Incompetent And, Seriously, Why Even Bother Trying Act of 2007.
I guess I can’t blame him for being skeptical. In retrospect, it was probably a mistake sending a reconstruction team consisting of eight circus clowns, 42 trained monkeys, and a Guatemalan janitor name Jesus.
But honestly, could a few extra billion dollars really buy anything better? The most it would probably get us is a few hundred Halliburton ghost employees and maybe a few dozen imported Kuwaiti ice cubes.
