A message from Secretary Rumsfeld

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld spoke Thursday at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum and Library and addressed the subject of U.S. troops in Iraq.

He said the United States should have enough troops in Iraq, but not more than enough.

"You don't want too many people there that you look like an occupying force," the secretary said, "that the insurgents and the terrorists are able to lie to people and say you're only there for their oil, that you're there to occupy the country, that you intend to stay there permanently, all of which is false."

Secretary Rumsfeld didn't say how many troops would be just enough, nor did he give a specific answer to this question: Enough to do what?

Every day it looks more and more like we have left the U.S. military stranded in Iraq with no military objective. U.S. troops are standing there like targets and tripwires, trying as hard as they can not to take charge of anything.

Secretary Rumsfeld compared U.S. troops in Iraq to an adult trying to teach a child to ride a bicycle. He said you let go slowly, one finger at a time, but you have to let go or eventually "you'll have a 40-year-old who can't ride a bike."

Perhaps that was a message to President Bush that the U.S. military will not be able to baby-sit the Iraqi army indefinitely. Or maybe it was a message to Iraq's government officials that they should not count on free bodyguard services forever.

If our bodyguard services give us any leverage with Iraq's newly-elected or immovable sectarian leaders, we ought to make use of it to push them toward the only policy that will bring stability to Iraq: privatizing the state-owned enterprises, starting with oil.

The Iraq policy hasn't worked because it is built on the false premise that democracy is freedom.

Freedom is a condition that exists under a government of limited power. A government that owns and controls all the important industries in a country has no limits on its power. People who live in countries like that are rightly afraid that if they get on the wrong side of the government, things will not go well for them.

But if the state-owned enterprises are privatized, the Iraqi people will have a path to economic self-sufficiency. Survival will not depend on loyalty to a group or sect or tribe that is trying to seize control of the government's oil revenue. It will depend on individual effort in a free economy.

The Iraq policy can still be saved. The only things standing in the way are a false premise and the wrongheaded ideas that follow from it.

President Bush should give up on the idea that the Iraqi government can be coaxed to use its oil wealth wisely on behalf of its people. He should give up on the idea that the mission in Iraq will succeed if he can just somehow persuade Iraqi hearts and minds to love democracy and trust America.

Instead, he should do what he can to encourage the growth of powerful, competing economic interests that will give the Iraqi people some real options, and a stake in their own freedom.


Copyright 2006

Editor's note: You might be interested to read the earlier post, Why the Iraq Policy Isn't Working, as well as A Plan to Get Out of Iraq: Blackstone's Fundamental Rights and the Power of Property and the source notes that accompany it.

.