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A Practical solution to the Iraq War.
1. The US renounces any interest in Iraqi oil.
2. The US pays for the reconstruction of Iraq but no American companies will participate, unless invited.
3. The US apologizes to France and Germany and invites them to reconstruct the Sunni Triangle with five billion dollars, no strings attached.
Why would France and Germany agree to participate now when they previously refused to participate in the invasion of Iraq and did not participate in the reconstruction of Iraq right after the war.
France and Germany did not participate in the original combat phase because the two countries had doubts about the Bush’s administration’s assertion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. France and Germany preferred giving the United Nations inspectors more time, and felt that the US was rushing into war.
The fact that Iraq owed France and Germany billions of dollars was another important factor
in their decision not to participate in the invasion. French and German engineering and
construction companies had built many of Saddam’s palaces and bunkers and had engineered
much of Iraq’s infrastructure. In testimony before Congress in 1988, Paul Wolfowitz mentioned
that France (and Russia) had “lucrative oil production contracts with the Saddam Hussein
regime.” French and German companies and even some politicians were implicated as
participating inappropriately in the Oil for Food Scandal. Many French and German politicians
and businessmen have longstanding personal relationships with Saddam, his family and other
important members of his regime.
The French and Germans would gain nothing and stood to lose much by replacing Saddam’s regime with a pro-American regime.
In retrospect, the two countries should have participated in the invasion to protect their national and financial interests. France and Germany could have at least sent troops to seize the Iraqi National Bank and other tangible assets. As it is, they may never see much of their money again.
Some members of Congress were so miffed at the action or lack of action on the part of our “so-called ally” France that they held a news conference on Tuesday, March 11, 2003 to announce that the three house cafeterias were henceforth forever changing the name of french fries to freedom fries. The two congressmen who held the news conference were the now disgraced Rep. Bob Ney, R. (Ohio), and Rep. Walter Jones, R., (NC).
Why did France and Germany not help to reconstruct Iraq? In fact, France, Germany and many of the other countries which opposed the war were looking forward to sharing in the spoils of victory. The sad truth is that France and Germany are not in Iraq today due to the cupidity and incompetence of the civilian leadership in the Pentagon.
On Friday, December 11, 2003, the Pentagon released a memo signed by Paul Wolfowitz stating that only countries which were members of the Coalition of the Willing would be eligible to participate in the $18.6 billion reconstruction effort.
According to CNN, “the memo's publication at www.rebuilding-iraq.net appeared to surprise the state department and the national security council.” Philip Gordon, an expert on transatlantic relations at the Brookings Institution, described the exclusion as "stupid and counter-productive,” and “another example of the Pentagon's willingness to just forge ahead."
William Kristol and Robert Kagan, analysts for the conservative think-tank The Project for the New American Century, urged President Bush to overrule the Pentagon, to “minimize the diplomatic damage done by the Pentagon’s heavy handed and counterproductive action.”
“Instead of being smart, clever or magnanimous, the Bush administration has done a dumb thing,” wrote Kristol and Kagan.
Democrats and some moderate Republicans also questioned the rationale for excluding so many possible allies.
Republican Senate leader Bill Frist said, “We have to remember that many of these countries being denied these contracts are supporting us elsewhere in the world, maybe fighting HIV-AIDS in Africa, maybe in Afghanistan.”
According to the British newspaper, The Guardian, the Pentagon's decision boosted the chance of British companies winning contracts, but the government was privately dismayed.
The British government was anxious for France and Germany to participate in the Iraqi reconstruction. The British hoped to cobble together as broad an international coalition as possible. It considered the US snub of other countries as not helpful.
Britain also wanted French and German support for a new UN resolution in the spring of 2004 to back the political process for a partial transfer of power to Iraqis, and for a UN-endorsed international force along the lines of those in Afghanistan and East Timor, according to the Guardian.
The memo stunned German officials. The foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, said Germany greeted the news with "astonishment". The German had thought that they had a established a better relationship with Washington since Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's September meeting with President Bush.
The German government spokesman, Bela Anda, said the decision was "not acceptable" and in contravention of "a spirit of looking to the future together".
According to published reports, the Canadian government, which had already spent $300 million to support Iraq and had lost several soldiers in combat in Afghanistan, threatened to cut off its contributions to the international reconstruction effort.
Many pundits pontificated that the timing could not have been worse for President Bush’s plan to ask countries to forgive Iraq’s massive debt. The president had selected former Secretary of State James Baker to be a special envoy to visit the capitals of Europe and ask the Europeans and other debtor nations like Kuwait to forgive up to fifty percent of Saddam’s debt. The very day the Wolfowitz memo was published, President Bush was calling foreign leaders and asking them to modify their demands for debt repayment. Since the memo was published on Friday, most media outlets waited to report the full details of the announcement of Secretary Baker’s mission and the Pentagon memo on the following Monday.
But the German Development Aid Minister Heidermarie Wieczorek-Zeul told Der Spiegel, “James Baker cannot expect any results in the debt question if the US does not change regarding the award of contracts. You can’t spread the results around but then keep the economic advantages for your own country.”
Before publication of Wolfowitz’s memo, Russian President Putin had shown some willingness to forgive some of the $8 billion dollar debt Iraq owed to Russia. After publication of the memo, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said, “…as far as the Russian government’s position on this, it is not planning any kind of write-off of that debt.”
The billions of dollars that Iraq still owes to France and Germany would be an important incentive to these countries to participate in the Iraqi reconstruction effort. The sooner Iraq becomes a functioning country, the sooner France and Germany would get back at least some of the money Iraq owes them.
Moreover, it is now clearly apparent that the US companies like Halliburton have totally bungled the reconstruction.
The Solution, repeated
1. The US immediately renounces any interest in Iraqi oil. Furthermore, in order to win the War on Terror, the US must eliminate the importation of all Middle Eastern and Eurasian oil. (Islamic oil)
2. The US pays for reconstruction but no American companies will participate, unless invited.
3. The US apologizes to France and Germany (privately) and invites them to reconstruct the Sunni Triangle with a down payment of five billion dollars, no strings attached.
We know that France and Germany would have participated in the reconstruction process if not for the Pentagon decision to deny them access to the bidding process.
That Pentagon decision is one of the leading causes of the insurgency, and is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of American soldiers in Iraq. If France and Germany had been allowed to reconstruct the Sunni triangle, it is unlikely that a Sunni insurgency would have erupted. (Some foreign terrorists would still have sneaked in and a few dead enders would have resisted but the amount of violence would have been greatly reduced.)
The reconstruction of Iraq by the American companies such as Halliburton has been a complete disaster. The fraud and engineering incompetence has been overwhelming. Therefore, the United States will provide the money for reconstruction, but American companies will not participate until after a company has been cleared of any wrongdoing by a thorough Congressional investigation. Japan, Canada, Britain and other countries can take over the job of reconstructing the rest of Iraq.
France and Germany would have complete control of their portion of Iraq, essentially the Sunni Triangle. All American businesses involved in Reconstruction in that area will leave, unless invited to stay by the Iraqis, France and Germany.
Several things must happen before France and Germany agree to participate. French and Germans engineers will not put a foot on the ground unless the Sunnis agree to stop the insurgency. The Sunnis will agree to end the fighting because all American combat forces would leave that portion of Iraq. There would be no need for US combat forces if the Sunnis are not fighting, and the Sunnis cannot fight the Americans if they are not there. American aid organizations would negotiate with the emerging Sunni leadership to see if any additional US help is desired.
The other major requirement needed before France and Germany would agree to participate is that the Sunni’s must kick al-Qaida and other terrorist groups out of their territory. Presently, the Sunnis are tolerating the presence of the terrorists because al-Qaida is killing Americans and Shiites. The Sunnis will not want al-Qaida to attack the French and Germans, as the terrorists would be eager to do. The Iraqi Sunnis and al-Qaida are not natural allies and they have competing agendas which cannot be reconciled over the long term. Therefore the Sunnis will either chase al-Qaida out of their territory themselves or invite the Americans to do it.
The Sunnis must understand that they cannot allow al-Qaida to remain in their territory and attack the remaining American troops or Shiites in other portions of Iraq.
Fortunately, once kicked out of Sunni territory, Al-Qaida will not be able to gain a haven in either Shiite or Kurdish territory. Obviously, a few terrorist cells may remain underground and have the ability to do some damage. Terrorists can also drive in from Iran or Syria for the day and set off a car bomb. In order to prevent this, the Sunnis, French and German will finally take steps to guard the border with Syria, something the US has never successfully done.
Under this solution, Syria will have an incentive to suppress terrorist activity that uses Syria as a transit point or originates there because some of the material needed for reconstruction will probably be brought in through Syrian ports, and the Syrians will collect payment. If for some reason Syria does not cooperate, materials and supplies can also be brought into Iraq through Jordan.
It may be necessary to use Syria and Jordan because Shiite extremists might attack or hijack French and German materials being transported through southern Iraq. Both France and Germany have strong historic ties with Syria and Jordan, which are both Sunni countries, so it is unlikely there would be a problem gaining permission to use those countries for transit if trouble occurs in southern Iraq.
One danger for the French and Germans is that al-Qaida may attack the two homelands because the French and Germans are frustrating Osama’s overall plan to rule the Middle East. However, if the moderate Sunni mullahs in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia express friendship and gratitude toward France and Germany for offering aid and comfort by rebuilding Sunni Iraq, al-Qaida will not be able to justify an attack. If attacks are made on France and Germany, it will be clear to the Muslim street that the struggle fomented by al-Qaida is not a war between Islam and the Crusaders, or the Middle East against the West, or a clash of civilizations, or World War 3, or an invasion to steal Arab oil, but a ruthless fight for political power by radical Islamic extremists.
The Arab street will realize that at least some Western countries are friendly to Arabs and Moslems once competent governments begin to use their competent construction and engineering companies to reconstruct Iraq.
This solution will also help solve one of the most contentious issues in Iraq, the equitable distribution of resources, mainly oil. It is known that large reserves of oil exist in the Kurdish and Shiite section of the country. The Sunnis, with the assistance of the French and Germans, can begin to explore for oil in their territory, and extract the oil with the help of the French and Germans. If they do develop oil fields, they would be wise to construct new pipelines through Syria and Jordan. These new pipelines would help both US and world national security interests by reducing the stranglehold that Iran presently has on a significant portion of the worlds’ oil reserves by way of their strategic control of the Strait of Hormuz.
This solution will not necessarily advance the partition of Iraq into two or three parts, which may or may not happen eventually anyway. This solution has the potential to help reduce ethnic and religious tensions by giving the Sunnis an opportunity to enjoy a reasonable standard of living. Experts estimate that unemployment in Iraq is as high as 40%.
Presently, the Shiites and Kurds have established an uneasy political alliance for protection against possible Sunni aggression. A more prosperous Sunni section of Iraq is less likely to attack the other sections.
The Kurds have large, undeveloped reserves of oil, and most of the Kurdish oil would probably go south through Shiite territory. But they should connect a pipeline to one of the new Sunni pipelines running through Jordan or Syria, in order to give them another option in case of a Shiite or Iranian attempt to block the export of their oil.
One of the main advantages of this solution is that with a prosperous and relatively strong Iraq, it will be more difficult for Iran’s extremist mullahs to achieve their goal of controlling Iraq or Iraqi oil.
According to a recent poll, 85% of the population of Iraq, including Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis, hate al-Qaida and by extension any other foreign terrorists. Once American combat troops leave, al-Qaida will no longer be useful to the Sunnis. After the US makes a commitment to remove combat troops and offers a diplomatic agreement to the Sunni insurgent leadership, the Sunnis will kill or chase the al-Qaida terrorists out of Iraq.
If the US begins today to create and implement a wiser and unselfish policy towards Iraq, the possibility of Iraq becoming a terror haven for al-Qaida after the US leaves is miniscule.
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