September 29, 2003

"In Peace: Good Will"

Dear Colleague,

An article in today's *Wall Street Journal*, entitled *Skimping on the
Peace* (attached below), explains why we, as a legislative body, must
come together and support the President's Supplemental request as
presented to Congress. **For me, this is not about right or left,
conservative or liberal. This is about doing the right thing at the
right time.**

The President's \$20.3 billion for reconstruction efforts in Iraq is not
wasteful spending. After WWII, Secretary of State Marshall vowed not to
repeat the mistakes of his predecessors. In his famous address in 1947,
Secretary Marshall stated, "Our policy is directed not against any
country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos."
I ask you to read these words and let history, not partisan politics, be
your guide. Let us not forget the words of Winston Churchill, "In War:
Resolution; In Defeat: Defiance; In Victory: Magnanimity; In Peace: Good
Will."

Sincerely,

John Shadegg

Skimping on the Peace

We\'re all for Congress paying close attention to what it spends. But
would that our honorable Representatives were applying as much
skepticism to the fine print of, say, the energy bill as they are to
President Bush\'s \$87 billion request for operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

It was to be expected that Democrats would nitpick the proposal for
political reasons. But now some Republicans are jumping on the bandwagon
too. Apparently, they\'re concerned about justifying the roughly \$20
billion in non-military reconstruction funds at a time of rising budget
deficits at home.

\"The people of Tennessee want to know why the \$20.3 billion couldn\'t
be repaid by the Iraqi people from the oil revenues,\" said
Representative Zach Wamp, who\'s rarely before met spending he didn\'t
like. He said he plans to offer an amendment making that money a loan.
In National Review Online, the usually sensible Stephen Moore has
co-authored a piece with Representative Tom Feeney (Florida) suggesting
much the same. They argue that Iraqis should even reimburse us for the
cost of the war.

These proposals are shortsighted in the extreme. It\'s not just that
Iraq has pressing needs, which aren\'t likely to be addressed by oil
revenues in the near future. It\'s that Iraq\'s Saddam-incurred debt has
already been estimated at close to \$130 billion. The U.S. should be
working to get the likes of France and Russia to forgive at least some
of those odious loans, not adding to the burden.

Moreover, it\'s not a good idea to charge Iraqis for spending over which
coalition authorities, not an Iraqi government, will have more or less
total control. If perfectly legitimate Halliburton contracts are
considered scandalous in some quarters when Americans are picking up the
tab, imagine what critics would say if Iraqis were asked to pay them.
\"So it was about the oil . . .\" The signal it would send to Iraqis
wouldn\'t help the battle for hearts and minds.

Congressmen needn\'t worry that Iraq is on the way to becoming a
long-run welfare case. The country\'s Governing Council has passed an
economic plan providing for open trade, and a pro-growth, flat-rate 15%
tax on corporate and individual income.

Plans are also well under way to give all Iraqis a stake in the success
of their new society through the creation of an oil trust, some of which
would go to fund public goods like education and some of which would be
paid out directly to individuals on a regular basis (in a version of the
Alaska oil trust). That strikes us as an enlightened way to show Iraqis
that they have a stake in this transition to self-rule. But getting
there will require some short-term American spending, and the trust
would be impossible if Iraq were then required to service excessive
debts.

The President\'s proposal is in the best tradition of American foreign
policy. Deep in debt after World War II, the United States did not seek
reparations or ask Europeans to pay for their liberation. Instead, we
launched the Marshall Plan, whose benefits inarguably exceeded its
costs.

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan started a defense buildup in the belief he
could defeat, not just contain, Soviet communism. Sure, there were the
famous thousand-dollar hammers. But once the Soviet Union collapsed we
learned from the Russians themselves that Reagan\'s buildup had
convinced them they couldn\'t compete with the U.S. The Reagan buildup
paid off in a peace dividend later.

Congressmen ought to be looking at Iraqi reconstruction funds as a
similar buildup for the war on terror. What the U.S. is trying to do in
Iraq is establish a democratic, pro-Western bulwark in the heart of the
terror-breeding ground that is today\'s Middle East. Already this policy
has freed the U.S. from its decade-long financial burden of containing
Saddam, as the drawdown of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia attests. The
success of a free and democratic Iraq would pave the way for lower
military expenditures in the region for decades to come.

We understand the political pressures some Congressmen are facing, and
we might be inclined to quibble with some of the line items in the
spending proposal too. But surely those who drew it up on the front
lines are in a better position to understand Iraq\'s immediate needs
than are the denizens of Capitol Hill. Those who voted for the war have
an obligation to see that Mr. Bush gets the resources and the discretion
to get the job done.