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Bush's 'morning after'
headache
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - While 225,000 United States troops
deployed around Iraq are now ready for their
commander-in-chief, President George W Bush, to give the
order to invade, skepticism is growing steadily back
home about what Washington will do once its forces reach
Baghdad.
Some lawmakers in Congress on both
sides of the aisle are especially frustrated because
they will have to appropriate the money that taxpayers
will pay, not only for the invasion itself but also for
the occupation afterwards.
That frustration
boiled over into anger on Tuesday when the Pentagon at
the last minute cancelled the scheduled appearance
before the Senate foreign relations committee of General
Jay Garner, who has been tapped to lead the office of
reconstruction and humanitarian assistance that will
effectively administer Iraq in the immediate aftermath
of any war.
"I pushed, we all pushed [the
administration] to give us some sense of [the potential
costs of the war and post-war efforts]," said Republican
Senator Chuck Hagel after Garner failed to show up. "No
answers. The administration chose not to have witnesses
today. No answers. The president was asked in his news
conference the other night. No answers. And I think the
best that they have come up with is, 'well, you'll know
about it when we bring up the supplemental
[appropriation bill]'. I don't think that's a good way
to do this."
Indeed, as the split between
Washington and European countries in the debate over a
war resolution in the United Nations Security Council
has widened over the past 10 days, lawmakers on Capitol
Hill have expressed growing concern that Washington may
end up footing most of the bill for the recovery and
reconstruction of a country of 22 million people.
"Every time [Pentagon chief Donald] Rumsfeld
opens his mouth," said one Senate staff member this
week, "I worry that he's going to say something
incredibly stupid about 'Old Europe' again and then
[French President Jacques] Chirac or [European Union
Commissioner for Foreign Affairs Christopher] Patten is
going to say, 'That does it. If the Americans think
we're going to help out with the occupation or
reconstruction, they can ask those new European
countries like Romania and Latvia. I'm sure they'll be
happy to help'."
The notion that Washington by
itself, or even with help from Britain, Spain and other
parts of Rumsfeld's "new Europe" or a "coalition of the
willing", can afford the costs of occupation and
reconstruction was blasted by at least one member of a
blue-ribbon task force convened by the influential
Council on Foreign Relations in a report released on
Wednesday. It found that Washington would have to devote
a minimum of about US$20 billion a year for at least
several years to sustain peace and recovery in Iraq.
"The United States can win the war with Iraq
alone, or at the head of a narrow coalition," wrote
James Dobbins in a supplementary note to the 58-page
report, "Iraq: The Day After". "It can win the peace,
however, only with much broader backing."
"The
price of policing Iraq, holding it together,
reconstructing its economy and reforming its society
goes beyond anything the American taxpayer will or
should be ready to bear," wrote Dobbins, whose expertise
derives from his work as special envoy to Somalia,
Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo during the tenure of former
president Bill Clinton and in Afghanistan under Bush.
The task force, which was headed by former
defense secretary James Schlesinger, a Republican who
has publicly supported invading Iraq, and former UN
ambassador Thomas Pickering, said that Washington will
have to deploy at least 75,000 troops to stabilize the
country and keep the peace, at an estimated cost nearly
$17 billion a year, or greater than the entire US annual
foreign aid bill.
Dobbins pointed out that such
an estimate, which he considered low, would require that
every infantryman in the US army spend six months in
Iraq out of every 18 to 24-months. "Given other demands
on US forces, this is not a commitment America alone can
long sustain," he noted.
The task force stressed
that 75,000 soldiers is the minimum figure, and the
situation could possibly require as many as 200,000 US
peacekeepers. That echoes a recent estimate by the head
of the US Army, Eric Shinseki, which was publicly
denounced by deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as
"way off the mark", but taken far more seriously on
Capitol Hill.
US lawmakers are already very
concerned about the ballooning federal deficit, which is
expected to exceed $300 billion this year, and the
growing demands of the US defense budget stemming from
the wider "war on terrorism".
The $300 billion
deficit does not include any of the costs incurred by
deploying US forces to the Gulf, nor the costs of an
actual war. Last week, the Congressional Budget Office
(CBO) estimated that simply sending troops and equipment
to and from the Gulf will cost nearly $25 billion, and
that a month's combat could cost an additional $10
billion or more.
After a war, the CBO staff
said, a US occupation could cost anywhere from $1
billion to $4 billion a month, a range that clearly
discomfits Congress, including Republicans, who see
their hopes for enacting a major tax cut this year sink
with every new estimate about the war's cost.
Congress is also worried that the
administration's failure to produce realistic estimates
about the costs of the war and subsequent occupation is
creating a false sense in the public that the Iraqi
conquest will be a relatively easy affair, on par with
Afghanistan.
"It is not clear to me that the
American people understand we are engaged in the long
haul if we are to be successful," said Schlesinger, who
called on Bush to be more forthcoming about internal
estimates.
Meanwhile, US non-governmental relief
groups that have been briefed by administration
officials about their plans to ensure that needy people
get life-sustaining supplies once a war breaks out have
said the plans appear to be "inadequate" and could
result in greater suffering.
The groups have
also voiced outrage at reports that several US
corporations, including Halliburton, Inc, where Vice
President Dick Cheney was CEO until his election, have
been asked to bid on reconstruction contracts worth
nearly $1 billion that include the provision of
emergency water and other supplies, services that are
normally carried out by voluntary groups.
(Inter
Press Service)
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