Yesterday’s Washington Post caught my editor’s eye in a special way.
First, Nell Henderson’s front-page feature, “As Economy Thrived Under Greenspan, So Did Debt” gives readers of The American Interest a decidedly “been there, done that better” feel. The current (Winter 2005) issue’s essay by Peter Hartcher, “The Amazing Bubble-Man”, covers the story in much greater depth, and more accurately. Moreover, Phil Merrill and Alan Sinai, in “Debating the Future of the U.S. Economy”, both show how Henderson’s characterization of the dangers of the a supposed low savings rate is mistaken.
Second, Doug Struck’s front-page feature, “Professionals Fleeing Iraq as Violence, Threats Persists” tells part of a story to be told in detail in the coming (Spring 2006) issue—by Andrew Erdmann in “Iraq in 3-D”—on your newsstand or in your mailbox on or before March 6. Erdmann served in Policy Planning in the State Department during the run-up to the Iraq war, then in Baghdad with the Coalition Provisional Authority, and then in the National Security Council under Robert Blackwill before leaving government. He was also an important source for George Packer’s Assassins’ Gate. AI readers are in for a surprising and illuminating perspective on Iraq from Erdmann—just one of four essays on “The Iraq War at Three” featured in the Spring issue.
But it was Sunday’s Washington Post front page that really takes the prize for surprise. The above-the-fold article on USAID funding Fatah against Hamas in preparation for the upcoming Palestinian Authority elections was truly electrifying. The first reaction any sentient analyst should have had was two-fold: hey, that’s not what USAID is supposed to do; and hey, better someone did something than no one did nothing—pardon my locution, but you get the idea.
This is worth pointing out if only because of the truly weird way the Washington Post and the New York Times have described efforts by the Information Ops guys in the Army in Baghdad to spin their turf. We paid to have certain articles placed in the Iraqi press? Shocking. We supported Sunni clerics who have stood against the insurgency and sought their advice? One would frickin’ hope so! So why are accounts of these activities written as though some deep dark sin were afoot? If it came out that the U.S. government, for example, was making no effort to develop ties with key Iraqi community leaders during a struggle focused on winning hearts and minds, the editorial pages of these same newspapers would be slamming us for that lapse—and rightly so.
But paying bad guys (Fatah) in the Palestinian territories to improve their chances against even worse guys (Hamas) in a democratic election almost totally lacking any genuine democrats, now, this is different, and it begs several questions.
To begin with, as the Washington Post article indicates, the USAID effort was subcontracted—twice. Anyone who knows anything about how USAID operates will not be surprised by this, except . . . . . I’ve never heard of either of these subcontractors. So the question: Is it possible that while USAID funds were involved here, the folks roaming the turf giving this money away were also U.S. government employees (rather than contractor employees) from another agency? Just wondering. . . . .
How efficient a use of $2 million is it to jam tens of thousands of dollars down the bank accounts of a score of small-time Palestinian officials (ministry clerks, really) who are used to having only a tiny fraction of that amount on hand? Does this suggest, well, fear, loathing and haste?
And what does this effort—assuming for a minute that the Washington Post got any of this essentially right—say about U.S. policy itself? It is U.S. policy to encourage democracy and political openings of all kinds. We have wanted the Palestinian elections to go forward so we pressed the Israelis not to ban Hamas from participating, even though Hamas is on our terrorist list as well as those of the EU and the UN. The Palestinians (and other Middle Easterners), says Secretary Rice, need “some room.” But then, oh so predictably (because so many of us have predicted it . . . . .), that “room” produces, or threatens to produce, a near-term political catastrophe. Hence we do what comes naturally: we panic and throw money.
Pushing democratic forms on societies where there are few if any democrats, and little in the way of the institutional and attitudinal antecedents of constitutional liberalism, will not produce functional democracies a la Quaker instant oatmeal. It will, in the Arab world, instead provide a tremendous boost to the very Islamist trends we ought to be opposing. But these are worries that do not arise in a faith-based foreign policy. Oh, boy.