Today’s Topic: Why Isn’t This Administration Listening To The Iraqi
Barham Salih, the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, spoke at length today at the Brookings Institute about a number of issues as viewed by the Iraqi government.
His talk included Federalism vs a Centralized Federal government and the need for accepting the need to sell the rights to their oil, as presented in one of the bills currently before the Iraqi parliament. Mostly we are talking about sharing resources in a Federalistic political environment as opposed to a Centralized Federal government which then CHOOSES who gets the income from Iraq’s resources.
It’s a pretty easy choice. With Shia in the south and easy access to oil, and Sunni in central Iraq with no active oil resources the concept of a Centralized government primarily run by the 60% majority of Shia, then one can easily see a dichotomy building. When you throw in the Kurds, who also have productive oil wells in their areas of Iraq, the problems become exponential in determining the type of government Iraqis will ultimately accept.
Since 90% of the argument is based on the 100% resource available to the Iraqi people, it makes sense that a true level of Federalism be allowed them in order to make decisions based on regional needs and productivity, not a Centralized government that can undoubtedly be able to fudge figures or slow down the process which ultimately will deny some level of monies or services.
Even without a true civil war in our own midst, one can say that a large majority of Americans determined that New Orleans and other victims of Hurricane Katrina would be granted a large amount of money in order to rebuild their destroyed lives.
But with a Centralized Federal Government, particularly one whose executors of law are of somewhat a slightly different bent than truly executing the law, one can see that in the aftermath of Katrina, once again large corporations received the benefits of the vast majority of the allocated monies whilst clearly 60% of displaced poor never received a penny to help them rebuild their lives.
The problem here is that we are talking about something as simple as Americans who have been denied money to rebuild their lives because a Centralized Federal government chose to allocate the money based on their ideological precepts rather than the direct needs of the people.
And the point here isn’t that a Centralized Federal government can’t work, but rather that once a single minded all encompassing train of thought takes over virtually all branches of government, the system automatically breaks down in its ability to respond to the needs of the people.
America has many resources to call upon, not the least is the quality of its citizens, but still we have a serious problem in New Orleans, and we STILL have a serious problem in Iraq. The failures of this administration simply are the best example of how easy it is to scale failure both up and down the ladder of success.
If nothing else than just the failures of this administration then still there is a bright light in the Presidency of George W. Bush. He has single-handedly shown that failure is scalable and thus is a bane to good government. On the other hand, success is also scalable, for every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So when we determine that failure is bad for everyone concerned, and then we add in the equation of balance, then success is the only option.
Psychiatry defines "insane" as one performing the same actions over and over again expecting different results. You might have read me mentioning that a number of times before, but it is well worth repeating.
Why? Because the concept of insanity goes directly along with the concept of success and failure. Any sane person wouldn’t throw money at a problem consistently when the results are the same every time. Conversely no one in their right mind would simply destroy a system that works well over an entire people in order to place into existence programs and processes which cause harm. Overall the results expose the fallacy.
So why are Americans (and their Congressional representatives) complacent about wanting to get our troops out of Iraq by waiting to see if this president actually has any viable method of completing HIS mission? Because we are scared so silly as to actually become politically inactive and simply expect different results when previous results would proclaim us insane. We have become the asylum whose inmates are now running the show.
Senator Joe Biden brought forth a Senate resolution which essentially split Iraq up into three parts, each governed by their own majority religious or ethnic groups. It passed 75-0 and was immediately badmouthed by the executive branch via our grossly overlarge Embassy compound residents as being out of touch with what the Iraqi people want.
Today Benham Salih told us differently. He specifically said that the majority of Iraqis would prefer just such a government. You know, one that can control the resources that might educate their populace and provide for health care and in general uplift their people out of poverty. How is it that he can have such a hope for Iraq when America shows more people in poverty than 7 years ago, and a preternaturaly insistence upon having American and British companies "partner" with the Iraqi people in oil exploration.
Here’s the rub. This administration will not allow for the individual regions to be the beneficiaries of their resources because it wants Iraq to sign over a large amount of profit to American and British companies for the continued exploitation of Iraqi resources. Now it is true that these companies would have to expend some serious money to find new resources in Iraq, but in the interim 30 years (the time frame in the law), they'd be pulling billions of gallons of gas and oil out of the Iraqi soil without any dollars invested in finding new resources. Most of the profits from this "beneficial contract" would go to the major oil companies, not the Iraqi people.
At the beginning of this year I wrote a blog about not profiting from conflict resources, which means adhering to the most strict interpretation of moral turpitude in order not to rape another country’s natural wealth at the expense of that country’s people. Profit doesn’t equate to all people profiting, and in historical fact, usually means that thousands or tens of thousands will die. In Iraq this is already a fact and western oil companies haven't pulled barrel one out of the Iraqi sand.
So I guess that this is the gist of what I’m talking about. If America, as a political entity, WILL NOT police international companies who have contracts with the American people, then our political entity is, AT LEAST, part of the problem. With the push of American power into all areas of the world, and our corporations globally expanding due to a century of direct policital and military intervention, then one could extrapolate that power, negates moral clarity, and showing that the United States of America is more than likely involved in one way or the other with some level of the strife of the entire world.
For how is it that we would invade and depose Saddam Hussein and yet not leave, or that we would allow the destruction of New Orleans and turn around and give billions of dollars to contractors who haven’t provided the contracted services?
If we can scale up our failures from New Orleans to Iraq and Afghanistan (although the time frames are different), then why can no one see that the scaling factors don’t stop there? People throughout the world hate us because of our policies and our failures. After all, with equal and opposite reactions, if America truly had a continually growing success in our endeavors, the failures would have just as incrementally decreased.
If one wishes to predict what would happen if America again preemptively attacked Iran due to intelligence that can’t be trusted, then by extrapolating our successes and failures, one would have to suppose that the failure would be scaled just as severely as our previous failures. Bombing Iran would incur war. Make no mistake about it. I've often heard the pundits talk about "well, we would be invading, we'd just be bombing". That's essentially what the 9/11 terrorists did to us. Kinda stirred up the hornet's nest here, don't you think?
Perhaps its not just the idea of listening to the Iraqis about their future, but listening to Americans who want to have a say in our present, our foriegn policy, and our future.
However, the real idea is that this country has become inured to failure. Our concept of existence as a country has failed us because our government has failed us and then spread this same failure over the world, with promises of doing the same for even more countries.
Not a very bright prognosis, if you ask me. The cancer may not respond to anything but extremely invasive surgery. Perhaps it is time to cut the invasive ideology out so that the Constitution and the American people can breathe easily again.
2:18:22 PM 
|
