Wednesday, 24 December, 2003

A Baker's dozen The Bush Administration announced recently that veteran foreign policy hand James Baker was being named special envoy Enter James Baker 3rd, and being tasked with a whip around with a tin cup to get various countries to agree to put up funds towards the reconstruction of Iraqi or at least some level of debt relief. I was a little dubious at first thinking this would be an itinerary of closed doors, but then the Germans came across, and later the Russians Putin Considers Iraqi debt relief. Now he's due to set off on a second round, Baker to Seek Iraqi debt relief in Asia. Either things are going well, or they're being spun considerably. I recall a segment on the Newshour last Friday, DEBT MISSION, The correspondent was pressing a German diplomat because their meeting with Baker had been so brief if there hadn't been some quid pro quo involved. "of course not." No pre-work at all?. Well, he wouldn't go that far. What made me doubt that things would go well was the Determination and Findings memorandum from a couple of weeks ago that came out under Paul Wolfowitz's signature, and came out on the eve of Baker's trip (see also: Asil Insights). That no country that was not part of the coalition of the willing was to get any contracts with The U S or Provisional Authority in Iraq. Despite reports that those in the White House were not happy with this. Bush strongly defended this through several news cycles. Glimpsed one way his comments that our boys are doing the fighting so American Companies will get the jobs seems fair, viewed another way it is a chilling statement that it is a matter of course that those that war, get to profit from war remember, Roman, these will be your art(Aeneid,vi). I'll let Ted Rall provide a satiric summary of the argument. Claudia Rosett's column Rebuilding Iraq With Clean Hands provides one with a taste of what apologists for this position might say. Krugman's take on this Deliberate Debacle is that Wolfowitz did this on purpose. A monkey wrench into the work of reconciled reconstruction. I think the administration's hard-liners are deliberately sabotaging reconciliation. These are tough times for the architects of the "Bush doctrine" of unilateralism and preventive war. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their fellow Project for a New American Century alumni viewed Iraq as a pilot project, one that would validate their views and clear the way for further regime changes. (Hence Mr. Wolfowitz's line about "future efforts.") Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan's Contracts for Iraq: Reverse the Pentagon's Decision is the fly in this ointment. These two are the heart of the Project for the New American Century. They are the last one would think to give up an inch of ideological ground for the sake of politics, as Paul Krugman assumed. They arrange their arguments on a slope between devious and wise. At the end of all this as James Baker prepares to head off on his next round. I still find my mind coming back to Wolfowitz's turn of phrase (I'm not sure where Krugman got this from - the phrase does not appear in the original memo - and he doesn't say, but he has it in quotes) of future efforts. What Krugman is saying and what Kristol and Kagan and Ted Rall are saying is the same thing. 2:04:04 PM    comment [];trackback [];

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