Bush: “I racked up my credit card”

Bush says $87 billion? Is he kidding? Let’s just round it up to $100 billion and do a little math. There are 25 million anti-American, Anti-Semitic, anti-western Iraqis (I’m rounding up. There are probably a baker’s dozen who aren’t). Fine, I don’t care about what’s in their hearts. In the real world, of real politics, I suggest that actions speak louder than words. If they would leave us alone, then fine, the hell with ’em. Let them work it out by themselves.

Dividing the amount we are ready to squander by the number of individuals leaves you with $4,000 for each man, woman and child in Iraq. That’s a lot of money. You can probably buy someone’s kidney for that in Baghdad.

Instead of waging a peace over there, might I humbly suggest, we should just give them the money. If we do that, they will have to buy things (which we can sell them at fair prices). They will have to start commerce. Some will squander it all. They will be known as the Poor. Others will be cleverer with their money, buy things, sell them and rise up as a Merchant Class. These people will be known as the bourgeoisie, the middle class, gilds…they’ve been called many things through the years. But their impact is always the same.

They will lend their money (a larger amount than the original $4,000 due to capital concentration). They will lend it to the poor, making them indebted, dependant and incorporated into a social fabric of debt, obligation and obedience. This will make them more peaceable.

They will also lend their money, in larger amounts, to the wolves of their society. The warlords, the “political leaders.” In medieval times these wolves were known as aristocrats. These days, in evolved Western nations, they go by the honorific C-something (like CEO, CFO, CIO and most importantly, Chairman). They frequently inherit their social and financial positions (Bush, Gore, Kennedy, etc.). Their excessive borrowing will force them to be more peaceable, too. They will, finally, have to sit down with the Lending Class and agree to let them have a say in social and foreign policies. In other words, the beginnings of democracy.

Many will argue that such analysis smacks of class warfare. I suggest it has more to do with a homeostatic balance within the population. Just as there is a social hierarchy in animals that live in packs, so is there a social hierarchy in humans (scientists consider us pack animals like dogs and primates).

I’m jamming a lot of things in here, but indulge me. The first great failed attempt at democracy, in ancient Athens, was preceded by a rise in this middle class, whose traders lent money to the warlord leaders of the city, and who required a stable and peaceful foreign policy to conduct their affairs with foreign lands. War is bad for trade, then and now. Again, the need for stable internal and external policies paves the way for democracy.

To return now to Iraq. What to do? Short answer: Start modestly by encouraging the development of capitalism and the rise of the middle class. Have the local warlords build up their militias, just as we did in America to keep the peace.

This lays the groundwork for a more medieval strategy. A what, you ask? First let me give a shout-out to Glenn Garelik who reported in 2002 for now-in-hiatus ADAM magazine on the work of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace experts Marina Ottaway and Anatol Lieven. They suggested just this creative approach, at that time, for Afghanistan...and it is now surely the only viable option for Iraq, too.

It boils down to the recognition of the historical evolution of the modern State. So right now, forget nation building. Try starting with city-state building. Let the warlords rule, encourage them (with a mailed fist in velvet glove) to get a council together to iron out their differences instead of waging border wars with each other. The velvet is modest international aid, such as food, medicine and the like. The mail: If one of them gets too far out of line, we step in, remove him surgically, and get out…letting the action serve as a warning to the others to curtail their excessively despotic ambitions.

Over time, repeating history, these pre-feudal regions, like Iraq and Afghanistan, called countries but not really countries in the modern sense, would evolve, as nations have, to true city- and finally nation-state-hood. With the guidance of (and the threat from) world powers such as the U.S. and the U.N., they would stay their own course, work out their own internal problems, not screw around with their neighbors and the rest of us and eventually succeed in reaching true nationhood and a civil society suitable for membership in the world community. ¶ 7:29 AM