You know, it really shouldn't have taken us this long to come up with a jobs program in Iraq. And it really shouldn't be limited to a couple thousand Sunnis. For all the talk of the military impacts of the surge, we're increasingly seeing that security gains are less about our efforts and more about internal political decisions by indigenous actors -- see, for instance, Petraeus's fulsome praise of, yes, Moqtada al-Sadr, for helping out with the security environment. But, for whatever reason, our politicians seem achingly incapable of simply leaving Iraq. So it's worth asking if a military deployment is really the most cost-effective way to spend billions and billions in Iraq. This site, in fact, asks the question well. "The US budget for Iraq in FY 2006 comes to $3,749/Iraqi. This is more than double their per person GDP. It's like spending $91,000 per person in the US. Why not just bribe the whole country?" But seriously: Why not just bribe the whole country? If we're determined to commit an enormous amount of resources to the Iraqi people, why not let the Ghost of Milton Friedman take over and simply design some sort of program that offers enormous economic benefits in exchange for reductions in violence? Given that the administration is already signaling its belief that you can reduce violence by paying off Sunni youths, and given that transferring large sacks of cash to tribal leaders was a major force behind the Anbar Awakening, why not keep spending flat, begin to withdraw troops, and convert those funds into simple cash payments? Seems likelier to work than anything we're doing now, less likely to get our troops killed, and far more likely to give disparate portions of the population a reason to enforce peace. How you'd end such a program might prove tricky down the road, but so too is ending an increasingly permanent occupation.
