My New Iraq Plan: Oil for Peace

In mulling over the conundrum we face in Iraq while smoking a nicely-aged Hoyo de Monterrey Excalibur, inspiration struck: Oil for Peace.

What's the biggest risk we run with President Bush's latest plan?

It's that Maliki and the Iraqi Shia throw their lot in with Tehran and decide civil war's their best bet. Iraq fractures and Turkey, Syria, and Iran pick up their pieces of it.

Here's how we change the game:

1. Iraqi oil revenues should be tied to law and order being sustained in the provinces controlled by the Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds.

2. Every month, Iraqi oil revenues released to the provinces should be debited by the amount they underperform key peace benchmarks: # IEDs going off, # civilians murdered, # foreign jihadis operating within the province, # government officials murdered, etc.

3. Any American response instigated to preserve the peace would be taken out of these oil revenues.

This will accomplish some desirable outcomes:

1. It will hit provinces and leaders which tolerate the presence of jihadists the hardest, and hit them where it hurts most: in the wallet.

2. It will create an economic incentive for cooperating with the U.S. against the jihadists, but simultaneously create an economic incentive to do so with domestic resources so as not to incur the American bill.

3. It will reward provinces and leaders who play ball and keep order.

4. It will reduce the cost of the American war effort and create some degree of self-funding as a hedge against Democrats' cutting off funding for our troops in the field. (They will move to do so this year).

5. It will create an incentive for Iraqis to ensure peace prevails and American troops go elsewhere.

Now, I can hear the liberals howling already. Let me dispense with their likely criticisms:

It will make us mercenaries. No more so than we were in WWII, when money changed hands regarding our materiel and manpower support of various allies. No more so than during the Gulf War, when the Saudis coughed up money for a variety of American areas of interest in appreciation for our defending their kingdom from the Iraqis. No more so than during WWI, when we received reparations from Germany. Mercenaries act at the direction of their paymaster. In this case, our troops would remain under American command, pursuing American interests. To the extent that our troops wind up doing things Iraqis or any other nation would reasonably be expected to do themselves, compensation is warranted to defray costs.

We're only in it for the oil. No, you're confusing Americans with Kofi Annan's gang, who used the Oil-for-Food program to line their own pockets while Iraqi babies died. We only get 20% of our oil from the Middle East, and the bulk of that from the Saudis. We're in it to destroy Middle Eastern terrorist networks, and to do so we're going to need Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds on our side. Buying them with their own oil is better than buying them with our blood.

Iraq is a sovereign state---we can't interfere. The Syrians and Iranians are interfering plenty; the problem is Iraq can't or won't defend herself yet. Fact is, someone's going to fill that power vacuum if we don't create an incentive for them to do so themselves.

Quagmire! Civil War! Vietnam! Those are all wonderful thrash metal band names, but quite beside the point here. Counterinsurgency involves 2 strategies: protecting the borders from foreign jihadist infiltration, and strengthening the control of the legitimate Iraqi government. Using this approach will encourage the Iraqis to play a greater role in the success of both.

The Iraqis will hate us. Not as much as American liberals already do. We can deal with it. And historically, while tensions are initially high, we've seen much improved relations once the counterinsurgency is successful. Look at the Germans and Japanese and Italians in the 50s. We didn't just wake a couple of folks up at odd hours in WWII, we burned whole cities to the ground with the women and children still in them. And yet Americans were viewed warmly by these folks a few years later. Peace and prosperity tend to do that.

It'll never work. One thing is certain: nothing untried ever works. But give me this, at least---I have already proposed exactly one plan more for victory in Iraq than the Democrats who get paid to lead have proposed.