With all this defense spending, where is the SysAdmin’s money?

ARTICLE: “U.S. Annual War Spending Grows: Even With Troop Cutbacks, Costs in Iraq, Afghanistan Will Reach $117.6 Billion,” by David Rogers, Wall Street Journal, 8 March 2006, p. A4.

ARTICLE: “Bush Budget Faces a Senate Effort To Tighten Foreign Spending, “ by David Rogers, Wall Street Journal 9 March 2006, p. A6.

ARTICLE: “Iraq reconstruction plan draws criticism following delays: State Dept. says initiative is moving forward,” by Steven Komarow, USA Today, 7 March 2006, p. 11A.

Iraq and Afghanistan cost us almost 20% more in FY06 than in FY05. Who says there isn’t enough money for the SysAdmin force?

Seriously, though, spending that level of money this late in the show only demonstrates how badly we’ve spent the money to date. The private sector should be running the development show fully by now, but because we didn’t get control of the security fast enough (not enough SysAdmin boots once the Leviathan high-tailed it) and let a Great Depression-like status grip society (no one seems to have any money, or access to outside capital), we got stuck in this deadly struggle with the insurgency that took advantage of the fact that enough Iraqis came to the conclusion that if there wasn’t going to be an expanding pie, they might as well fight over what’s left: oil, land and identity.

Scary, isn’t it? The CPA civilians run things at first and screw it up royally. Then the generals rise up and start taking things more into their own hands, setting in motion the serious build-up of Iraqi security forces that allows the drawdown notion to actually seem feasible this year (we’re not doing that much fighting anymore, but instead we mostly just get blown up). Now the State Department’s really in charge and guess what? The economic stuff seems as slow and confused as ever, even as the vaunted Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) approach is duplicated from Afghanistan to Iraq.

So it’s still piecemeal for us. The military is working on it’s A-to-Z system for processing a militarily-bankrupt state, and Iraq gets a decently working security force as an output. But still, we’ve gotten basically nowhere on creating Iraq the reasonably functioning economy, instead obsessing over the constitutional stuff that may, in the end, never work for all the same reasons why Yugoslavia became destined for break-up once the strongman Tito passed (it just took longer for the “economic patriotism” to emerge there as the stronger states sought divorce from the weaker ones). We’re watching the same process here: Kurds and Shiites with oil wealth want nothing to do with their former political masters. And who the hell can blame them?

Some will call Iraq’s inevitable break-up a “loss” for America and a “victory” for Al Qaeda, but this will be complete nonsense. It will just be the result of the booby trap left behind by the British Empire when it created the pretend state of Iraq in the first place decades ago to cover its tracks when it began its colonial retreat from the region. All we did was finally pull the string.

Will the region be better for that daring act? In the end, it’s hard to see how it could be any worse than it was for the past several decades--unless you’re a big fan of dictatorships keeping problems out of your hair (and admittedly, some are, including myself under the right circumstances of growing broadband economic connectivity between the masses and the outside world). But all that “stability” ever bought us was the bigger bang down the road.

And now, thanks to all the mismanagement we’ve seen to date on the postwar handling of Iraq, we’ve got a Congress ready to get stingy all over the dial on foreign spending--aid or otherwise. Combine that with the rising tide of economic “patriotism” we’re witnessing from all sorts of modern-day Know-Nothings, and we’ve got a wonderful package going on here.

Think a well-funded, well-run Department of Everything Else is too much to ask for? Well then, I say, consider what NOT having one actually ends up costing America.