Losing the battle to rebuild Iraq
More than THREE YEARS after the United States kicked off the biggest nation-building effort since the Marshall Plan, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki last month made this astonishing plea to Congress: "It is imperative that the reconstruction start now!"
Americans can be forgiven for asking, "Huh?" After all, haven't taxpayers already spent more than $30 billion trying to
turn Iraq into a thriving democracy? Wasn't Iraqi oil money supposed to be paying for the rebuilding by now? What happened?
The answer is, precious little. Although the U.S. has already burned through more cash in Iraq than it did in Germany or Japan during the entire post-World War II recovery period, it has failed to spark peace or economic renewal.
Iraq still produces less oil than it did under Saddam Hussein, according to the most recent State Department figures. Electricity generation is hovering above prewar levels, but higher demand means that many Iraqis -- including the entire population of Baghdad -- are worse off than under Hussein.
Scores of health clinics and hospitals are unfinished, their doors and windows walled up with concrete. Raw sewage continues to flow directly into the Tigris River. The U.S.-trained police force is riddled with death squads. And then, of course, there is the unrelenting daily violence unleashed by the same Sunnis and Shiites who were by now supposed to be happily employed in U.S.-funded work projects.
President Bush once boasted that the aim in Iraq was to build the "best" infrastructure in the region. Now, top U.S. officials claim that the goal is only to "jump-start" the economy. The president's vision of building a city on a hill has been scaled back to pouring a concrete slab.
The reasons for the failure are well known and maddeningly circular. First, too few troops meant that the U.S. military was unable to provide the security needed. The biggest difference between postwar Japan and Germany and postwar Iraq is the word "post." Despite Bush's assurance that "major combat" is over in Iraq, the war never really ended.
The continuing violence, in turn, doomed the Pentagon's reconstruction strategy: contract out the work of rebuilding to large, mostly American multinationals. Iraq showed that corporations are not designed to operate in the middle of a war zone. Companies like Bechtel, Fluor and Parsons had to hire massive private security forces that drained up to a quarter of the rebuilding budget. Engineers spent weeks trapped in their Green Zone quarters, costing $4 million a day. Sabotage of oil pipelines cut production by a third, costing billions of dollars that could have otherwise helped pay for new schools and water treatment plants.
