Strange Bedfellows
The trolley must be off the track when Dennis Kucinich and
Charles V. Pena agree that we should get out of Iraq, like, this weekend.
Kucinich sincerely understands a deep truth
not accessible to most of us: our destiny is to overcome the collective illusion
of war
as the answer, but his methods sound
too far out for the electorate. He probably doesn't know that he's echoing what
Dwight Eisenhower said
about peace 40 years ago:
I like to believe that people in the long run are going
to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that
people want peace
so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the
way and let them have it.
Though force can protect in emergency, only justice,
fairness, consideration and co-operation can finally lead men to the
dawn of eternal peace.
(Jim
Moore doesn't seem like an Eisenhower disciple, but
this sure sounds like Jim's Second
Superpower meme.)
Charles V. Pena is the Director of Defense Policy Studies
at the Cato Institute: the most aggressively
libertarian think tank in Washington. Presumably, his goal is the same as Cato's:
dismantle
the
government, starting with overseas adventures:
The United States must leave Iraq posthaste before
the Iraqi mission becomes a sinkhole that swallows billions more of taxpayer
dollars and all too many American lives. The best way to guarantee the
safety of American troops is to bring them home.*
[Securing Iraq is] doable if they're
willing to make hard choices. But politically the administration has said
there are enough troops. And they're trying to avoid all comparisons
to Vietnam," says
Pena. "But if you ramp up to almost a quarter of a million troops, suddenly
Vietnam comparisons become impossible to avoid."*
With the edges of the bell curve lobbying for a quick exit,
we may get one. Let's game this out a little. We can watch the political
forces drive up the costs and casualties relentlessly over the next 3-10
years, a Viet Nam replay, or we could find a rational way to clear out fast.
This
will require some fancy footwork.
Recovering an out-of-control Plot Line
Our government's like a novelist who has lost control of his
characters and plot development, with the dialogue somehow taking his creation
where he hadn't imagined. That being the case, this novelist must go with
this disastrous flow or come up with a deus ex machina real quick
now. If there might be such a mechanism, what might it look like? We need
a quick and plausible way
for the Iraqi stakeholders to
build
consensus, capitalize development, get people working on a common vision,
and we need to do it without our people present. Aha! The perfect answer:
a magical web app!
"Any sufficiently advanced technology...
...is indistinguishable from magic."
–Arthur
C. Clarke
I've got economic and political advice that Dr. Dean hasn't
asked for, and neither have his policy people (though at least I've met
them). As the potential substitute novelist trying to wrestle this story
line from disaster, Dr. Dean should have an alternate plot outline available.
The best outline would be one that seems most plausible coming from the Dean
camp and compelling enough to gather hope and credibility.
The Dean campaign is filled with savvy Netizens who have convinced
us that they know more about this stuff than the rest of us. They could
develop a web-based enterprise whereby Iraqis and their allies can complete
forms, make commitments, securitize their commitments and receive electronic
transfers to fund their vision, infrastructure, institutions and civility.
The funds would come as private loans, guaranteed by the $87
billion we're about
to
commit
but
won't
need
if we
get out of
Iraq quick. Transfers would be based on real outcomes, one of which would
be documented commitments to build, for example, bridges and schools and
hospitals.
Money.iraq.gov would provide so
many ways for Iraqis to make money that they'd be more interested in how
to use
the new WiFI &
ATM
infrastructure than their AK-47:
- Credibly commit to build a $25 million Halliburton bridge for $1 million
= $50,000
- Deliver engineering drawings for the bridge = $50,000
- Start, continue, finish bridge construction, etc., etc.,
etc.= $100,000, $100,000, $100,000
- Send a child to a non-religious school for a month = $10
(?)
- Teach in a non-religious school for a month = $500
(?)
- Guard a pipeline within view of one of the 100,000 new
webcams = $25/night
Would it work? Who the hell knows? But it's at least as plausible
as the thinking we've seen so far. And unlike the current plot, there's no
prequel proving that the plan can't
work. The current plan was so flawed from the outset that even a Vermont
physician knew it would fail.
I bet Bezos would
put the whole program together for a dollar a year. Now that Amazon's book
scanning project is finished, he's probably
got enough untapped processing power to host it. (Sorry, Jeff, no patent
rights)
In fact, does the government even need to host these services? Why not model
it on the fed-insured Student Loan model, where a government guarantee has
spawned an entire industry offering terrific web applications to put serious
money to work for you.
Of all the answers to the Iraq mess, http://www.money.iraq.com
is the only idea that might not fail.
1:21:35 PM 
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