By Paul Mutte
Iraqi Parliament
"In
a late-night vote with little scrutiny, [the Iraqi] parliament last week
approved spending $50 million on … armored cars out of the $100 billion Iraqi
budget for 2012," according to the Associated Press. With some quick math,
I figured that if all 325 members of the Iraqi parliament halved their monthly
salaries ($22,500, according to the AP) for a year and pooled the money
together, they'd only be about $6 million short of being able to afford the
cars without needing to increase to the
budget. Perhaps halving their salaries would be seen as a goodwill gesture,
even though the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)
notes that most of the budget is fed by oil revenues.
It
probably won't work, though. The 40 Sadrist legislators in the parliament
wouldn't likely participate in such an effort because Muqtada al-Sadr says that
any legislator who buys an armored car is "a traitor for his nation and
homeland, and moreover, disobedient to God." Although in theory, 40 fewer
members means 40 fewer cars, so I don't think the calculations would change (if
we assume that for $50 million, every member would have gotten their own car).
The
AP report said nothing about the possibility of legislators carpooling, unfortunately.
Iraqi
legislators certainly feel they need this protection given the fact that car
bombings -- blamed on "al Qaeda in Iraq" -- continue to hit Iraqi
cities, and the parliamentary building itself was bombed in 2007 (by a suicide
bomber, though, not a vehicle bomb). At least five parliamentarians have been
assassinated in office since the body formed, and more have been wounded by
failed attempts on their lives. However, the way they've chosen to respond to
the attacks -- by voting themselves money to buy bullet-proof Mercedes -- has
upset many Iraqis, since there hundreds of people who can't afford gated
compounds, sniffer dog details or armored cars and pay a huge price for
continued sectarian violence, which some Iraqis increasingly believe the government
itself is complicit in, either through incompetence or worse.
And
considering that at $22,500 a month, the average Iraqi parliamentarian would
have a higher annual salary than the Speaker of the House in the U.S. Congress,
it's hard to disagree with the assessment of a Mr. Abdul-Wahab of Baghdad that
the legislators are "addicted to privilege."
Perhaps
Washington could provide the cars, though, as a gesture of good faith to
"reengage" with Baghdad? The Washington Post op-ed went to print
urging the U.S. to reassert itself in Iraq by not reducing the number of staff
in the U.S.'s bloated Baghdad Embassy and finding a way to redeploy U.S.
soldiers to Iraq (some Members of Congress had hoped that we'd be able to keep
at least 10,000 soldiers there; the Obama Administration did try to renegotiate
the "status of forces" agreement with the Iraqis, though ultimately
the White House followed through on the withdrawal schedule set by George W.
Bush). "Iraq could be the linchpin of a new U.S. strategy for the Middle
East at a time when one is desperately needed," the authors write, evoking
the moment in 2003 and 2004 when we were told that Ahmed Chalabi was a new
George Washington.
If
George Washington was ever investigated for corruption and providing false intelligence,
that is. Matt Duss's pithy Twitter riposte to this editorial was simply
"Former Chalabi boosters blame Obama for Iranian influence in Iraq."
While
from a neoconservative perspective the authors -- who are both from the AEI, a
strong booster for regime change in Iraq -- make sense, as the neoconservative
model for influence via occupation equals postwar South Korea and Japan,
they're advancing a losing argument. There is no political will in the U.S. to
redeploy thousands of soldiers back to Iraq, and except for some Iraqi Army
officers and parliamentarians, the Iraqis wanted the U.S. to adhere to the
agreement. Moreover, there's little leverage Washington could bring to bear
against Baghdad, since the Bush-Maliki relationship was never a partnership: it
was an occupation.
Essentially,
the only way the U.S. would regain that leverage is if sectarian violence
becomes much more widespread (say, a series of attacks precipitates the
Sadrists or the Badr Organization or Sunni tribal militias in Anbar Province to
quit the electoral process and return to fighting). Then an unequal
relationship could be built in to the bilateral relationship -- which would
prove that 1) a permanent military presence is what the U.S. desires most and
2) Iraq has made little progress despite nine years of occupation. The latter
would rather discredit the former, I feel, but as the National Interest pointed
out last year, none of those who endorsed the occupation want to admit that
"the United States has paid a terrible cost -- some $850 billion and more
than 4,400 dead American soldiers -- to make Iran the most influential power in
Iraq" (to say nothing of Iraqi lives lost).
An
anonymous Iraqi quoted by WSJ put it best: "They told us in the last
elections that our vote is gold. Where is the gold? My vote has become
rust."
Your
vote, and the neoconservative Project for a New American Century both, though I
imagine many Iraqis do not mourn the latter.
-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy In Focus Blog on
06/03/2012
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