Regardless of what we might feel about the war in Iraq, the fact is that we are stuck there for the long term. The President is now asking for $87bn, and the cost is likely to balloon far higher than that.
According to my calculation, $87bn equates to roughly $3700 dollars per man woman and child in Iraq.
I think we can save a lot of money and American lives but taking the following steps;
- Help the Iraqis implement a simple and fair constitution protected by an independent judiciary.
- Give $500 to every man woman and child in staged payments over a period of 12 months.
- Provide a $200 assault rifle to every male over the age of 20, for the purposes of creating an organized civilian militia.
- Pull all US troops out of Iraq in a staged withdrawal, in cooperation with local militias thereby guaranteeing no lapses in security.
- Provide $20bn in foreign aid to whichever government the Iraqis elect.
Not only will we save about $60bn dollars, we’ll stop American servicemen being killed on a daily basis. Should any dictator, tyrant or foreign government try to rise to power, the Iraqi people will have their own means to overthrow them. The US Army has enough problems trying to contain Najaf and Tikrit, it’d pretty hard for a dictator to rise to power if the rest of Iraq was capable of employing similar guerilla tactics. The $20BN of foreign aid would be enough to get any government up and running until they can start exporting oil again.
I am sure this plan has a few rough edges and can be refined further… but it’s a start.
If you don’t think that this is the best way to move forward, feel free to put forward your own plans.