NP: Primus, Rhinoplasty

Yet another hand-wringing editorial in the NYT about the lack of real international support for the reconstruction of Iraq, and it got me thinking of one of my big "what I would have done if I were John Kerry" theories.

What almost amazes me about the whole question here is how no one seems to dwell too long on the notion that many countries had a financial stake in the pre-Dubya Iraq. It was fairly well-known that France, Germany and Russia resisted the initial invasion on monetary rather than moral grounds. Although you might argue that there were moral grounds involved in that they didn't want anyone to see their lack thereof due to their monetary grounds.

The mistake by the Bush administration, in my view, was that they pilloried and punished this resistance instead of using these countries' financial stake as leverage. If they were bought off by Saddam, surely they could be bought off by lucrative post-Saddam contracts, right?

When pressed on how he would involve an antagonistic internationally community, John Kerry kept coming back to having a summit, and Bush rightly criticized the approach. Summits were already happening, and not accounting for much, the recent forgiving of some Iraqi debt perhaps being an exception, but an exception in the wrong direction. Taking cash away from countries who are actually trying to help doesn't seem like a good way to maintain a coalition. Giving them cash, on the other hand, makes friends quickly.

If we, and I emphatically mean the imperial "we," see a barren, desolate and still oil-rich Iraq as such a cash cow, surely everyone else does as well. What I think Kerry should have done when questioned was say that he would open up the bidding of contracts to more nations, particularly France and Germany. Heck, I'd even give Iran and Syria a shot, because attacking militant regimes through capitalism may be as good a catalyst for democracy as any, and almost certainly better than blowing shit up.