Promises, Promises...

by hilzoy

Remember this?

"Having helped to liberate Iraq, we will honor our pledges to Iraq, and by helping the Iraqi people build a stable and peaceful country, we will make our own countries more secure."

Or this?

"America pledged to rid Iraq of an oppressive regime, and we kept our word. (Applause.) America now pledges to help Iraqis build a prosperous and peaceful nation, and we will keep our word again. (Applause.)"

Or this?

"This government is determined to hear the call from the Iraqis, and the call is they want a society in which their children can go to school, in which they can get good health care, in which they're able to live a peaceful life. It's in the national interest of the United States that a peaceful Iraq emerge. And we will stay the course in order to achieve this objective."

Or this?

"In a lot of places, the infrastructure is as good as it was at pre-war levels, which is satisfactory, but it's not the ultimate aim. The ultimate aim is for the infrastructure to be the best in the region."

Andrew Sullivan does:

"Once again: a memory check. Do I recall being told that a critical element in winning over Iraqis would be a massive Marshall-Plan-type effort to rebuild the economy? Was I then reassured that America's military strategy would be primarily to protect infrastructure and to rebuild the shattered energy and electricity grid?"

And Think Progress seems to recall a National Strategy for Iraq, released a month ago, that included extensive discussion of a three-track strategy for victory. One of these three tracks was the economic track; of it, the Strategy document said:

"• The Economic Track involves setting the foundation for a sound and self-sustaining economy by helping the Iraqi government:

- Restore Iraq’s infrastructure to meet increasing demand and the needs of a growing economy;
- Reform Iraq’s economy, which in the past has been shaped by war, dictatorship, and sanctions, so that it can be self-sustaining in the future; and
- Build the capacity of Iraqi institutions to maintain infrastructure, rejoin the international economic community, and improve the general welfare of all Iraqis."

Later in the Strategy document, there's a lot more detail on what we plan to do, and why it matters that we do it.

Or perhaps I should say: why it mattered one short month ago. For despite the extensive explanation of the "Strategic Logic Behind The Economic Track" (pp. 22-3) and the impressive list of "Continuing Challenges In The Economic Sphere" (pp. 24-5), today we find out that the Bush administration has abandoned an entire third of its strategy:

"The Bush administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February, officials say. The decision signals the winding down of an $18.4 billion U.S. rebuilding effort in which roughly half of the money was eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein.

Just under 20 percent of the reconstruction package remains unallocated. When the last of the $18.4 billion is spent, U.S. officials in Baghdad have made clear, other foreign donors and the fledgling Iraqi government will have to take up what authorities say is tens of billions of dollars of work yet to be done merely to bring reliable electricity, water and other services to Iraq's 26 million people."

And we're not anywhere near our original goals:

"In two of the most crucial areas, electricity and oil production, relentless sabotage has kept output at or below prewar levels despite the expenditure of hundreds of millions of American dollars and countless man-hours. Oil production stands at roughly 2 million barrels a day, compared with 2.6 million before U.S. troops entered Iraq in March 2003, according to U.S. government statistics.

The national electrical grid has an average daily output of 4,000 megawatts, about 400 megawatts less than its prewar level. Iraqis nationwide receive on average less than 12 hours of power a day. For residents of Baghdad, it was six hours a day last month, according to a U.S. count, though many residents say that figure is high.

The Americans, said Zaid Saleem, 26, who works at a market in Baghdad, "are the best in destroying things but they are the worst in rebuilding.""

We could have tried to maintain order after Baghdad fell, rather than abandon the country to looters. We could have run the reconstruction effort competently, instead of sending job applicants to the Heritage Foundation to perform crucial tasks and then being surprised when things went wrong. We could have done any number of things with some minimal degree of competence, rather than choosing political expediency and cronyism at absolutely every turn. But we didn't.

And now the Bush administration is preparing to abandon Iraq without bothering to announce or defend what they're doing. They will continue to say that Democrats are the ones who favor cutting and running, while they themselves do exactly that, after having created the mess to start with.

Thanks, guys.

Comments

[CharleyCarp]

I for one am not sorry in the least if we scale back our efforts here. We're (by which I mean the people we have chosen to represent us) not capable of doing any better at this than the Iraqis are. All of the problems are Iraqi problems, and all of the solutions should be Iraqi solutions.

I've got no problem at all with spending the 'peace dividend' from withdrawal on a grants program that has standards and accountability. And a prohibition on using grant funds for lobbying.

[hilzoy]

CharleyCarp: I more or less agree with you -- most of what I think should happen in the world, even the fairly simple and easy stuff, would not be done right by this administration.

What gets me are two things: first, that this is another one of the responsibilities we really did assume in invading Iraq. That one way or another we won't discharge it, since either (a) we won't try or (b) this administration will try and make a mess of it, only makes me more furious about our having assumed it.

Second, the dishonesty of doing this while (OMG, an unsupported prediction) continuing to depict Bush as Mr. Stay The Course and Democrats as the weak cut and run crowd.

[CharleyCarp]

We don't disagree. Given what we can expect in the way of execution, though, I have to just say that two wrongs don't make a right. Or thirty wrongs. Or three hundred wrongs.

[lily]

I wonder if Bush's lack of will to sustain commitment is part of why his support is dropping within the military. I inarcurately sited a poll from Military Times--it should have been Army Times--that shows an decreasing support for his administration. There's an article about this on the TPM Cafe.
Military peoplew will know that shifting from ground troops to airwar is absolutely the wrong thing to do when figting an insurgency.
Bush is cutting and running but he will be the last one to admit it.

[xanax]

All the Bush sound-bites (quoted by hilzoy above) are from 2003.

It's just criminal to see what those pesky liberals have done to W's resolve in just two short years!

[zen_less]

What, no trolls here defending the Bush administration? C'mon guys, what does the White House pay you all that money for? Well, in hopes of getting a little scratch thrown my way, I'll give it a shot:
"Dont you weak-kneed defeatist Howard Dean ass kissers realize that things are so much better there and that by giving them more money we'll only make Iraq into a failed welfare state like the ones you love so much in, um, Mississippi..."
OK, I was going pretty good until that last part, but I still that's worth a few thou, don't you?

[cleek]

this is consistent with Bush's remarks from the 2000 election:

"I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building," Bush told an audience at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. "I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war."

A few minutes later, moderator Jim Lehrer asked whether it was time to create a civilian force to come in after military interventions and do the job. Bush replied, "I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I'm missing something here. I mean, we're going to have kind of a nation-building corps from America? Absolutely not."

we have simply mis-remembered the intervening 5 years.

[Lame Man]

Hmm. I would have thought one of them often-mentioned "lessons of 9/11" was:

Don't leave undeveloped countries lying around where Al Qaida will gladly move in.

Ask the Afghanis how well we do with reconstruction.

[Amos Newcombe]

What, no trolls here defending the Bush administration?

Well, there's only one troll hanging out here these days, as near as I can tell. Possibly two, if you really mean to say that any defenders of Bush are trolls on the take.