Blind Pig Gets an Acorn

8 February 2006



Rumsfeld is Right about Corruption Hurting Iraq

Yesterday, Field Marshall Donald von Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “It’s true that violence, corruption and criminality continue to pose challenges in Iraq.” He’s dead right, and if it doesn’t get settled soon, it will be another nail in the coffin of his Mesopotamian adventure.

After attacking Iraq with far too few troops for a successful occupation against the advice of the generals around him, the Field Marshall was forced to adopt a “Vietnamization on the Tigris” policy. US forces and their coalition allies would do most of the fighting while an Iraqi government got elected and while that government found the troops to protect it and its people. Then, as the president puts it time and time again, “As Iraqis stand up, America will stand down.” It is the least bad approach to an awful and unnecessary situation.

However, the plan rests on the hope that sufficient Iraqis exist to fight and die for the elected regime. Men will gladly lay down their lives for a great many ideas, but they will not fight for a government infiltrated by gangsters, profiteers and leeches without being forced to do so. Thus, crooks can run places like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but they have trouble in places like Canada and Finland.

Field Marshall von Rumsfeld offered no specifics, but Britain’s Daily Telegraph noted “Iraq’s commission on public integrity announced that Meshaan al-Jaburi, a Sunni member of parliament, had been charged with stealing millions of pounds intended for pipeline protection and funnelling a portion of the money to rebel groups.” Mr. al-Jaburi has fled the country and is believed hiding in Syria. The same report cites an anonymous American official saying "corruption was ‘becoming a very real threat to the new state’, adding: ‘Corruption funds the insurgency’.”

The Iraqi government that is aborning will have its work cut out for it in this sphere. Usually, it takes a strongman to stamp out the corrupt bureaucrats, bandits and black-marketeers, and Iraq is nominally committed to a democratic system of government. America still hasn’t wiped out the mafia that has been around in the US for a century or so. There isn’t much cause for optimism, but at least, the Secretary of Defense knows there’s a problem – and he hasn’t been very observant up to now. It’s progress of a sort.

The Danish flag appears here as a protest against the violence being done to the free press of that country and elsewhere by those offended by some cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, peace be unto him. A perceived insult is not an excuse for intimidation and violence, even in the name of the Creator. One cannot insult God, only small-minded men who falsely claim to speak for Him.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.


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