Plenty has been said recently about the likelihood of the U.S. not providing further funding for reconstruction in Iraq. Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post articles offer insights into the rationale involved in doing so. Most of the arguments used to justify this position emphasize the need for Iraqis to take control of their own governance, finances, and rebuilding. However, there also undoubtedly exists an undercurrent of reluctance on the part of some U.S. policymakers to continue to expend enormous sums in Iraq — especially for costs not related directly to our military operations — when we have large domestic federal spending deficits and an enormous reconstruction effort of our own underway in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Nevertheless, others have started to come forward to offer the converse perspective. In yesterday’s Washington Post, the Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon wrote that it “would be a major strategic mistake” for the U.S. not to provide additional economic and reconstruction assistance to Iraq. “Economics is a critical element of any success strategy in Iraq,” O’Hanlon notes, and “the failings of the economy foster resentment, and thus support for the insurgency, among the Iraqi people.”
Despite public opinion polls indicating Iraqi optimism about the future is anywhere from 50 to 70 percent, there are still huge numbers of citizens — many in the Sunni Arab heartland, which provides the bulk of the insurgency — who do not like what liberation has brought. They think that life is worse now, and expect it to stay bad.
O’Hanlon also points to U.S. military sources who acknowledge that “fewer than 50 percent of Iraqis have themselves seen any direct evidence of U.S. efforts at reconstruction.”
This is perhaps not so much about the amount of money the U.S. would continue to provide Iraq in coming years, but rather the symbolism that the U.S. is a reliable partner in helping the Iraqis to build a better future. As O’Hanlon documents — and Brookings has a fantastic Iraq Index for tracking reconstruction and security indexes — much of the $21 billion in assistance the U.S. has already provided Iraq actually has been shifted from reconstruction and infrastructure projects to bolstering security for U.S. government personnel and contractors as well as dramatically ramping up the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces. Those are indeed legitimate expenditures, but by nearly all accounts this still leaves us a long way from achieving the picture we painted for Iraqis after we toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Published Date: January 25, 2006