I recently noticed that some comments I made about the war on terror, patriot act and Arafat found their way onto the website of the Irish Freedom Institute. This is an Irish non-profit think-tank founded in 2003 to propose policies which are “pro-freedom, pro-enterprise, less government and strengthened security”. I must admit that I originally thought this organisation would be proposing whacky (i.e. naieve) ideas with a strongly left-leaning idealogy for the resolution of world problems. It’s nothing of the sort. IMHO the FI has many extremely sound and innovative policies with insightful analysis and a predisposition to solve rather than blame. An example is their recent posting about the evolution towards democratic governance in Iraq. A thoughtful and illuminating read rather than the kind of oh-so-trendy and irritating US-bashing polemic that many sections of the media have been feeding us for the past few months. It’s easy to criticise the nature of the political and military analysis that led to the war in Iraq while forgetting that the establishment of a democratic government in place of a despotic dictatorship is a worthy aim. The key issue is oil and the proposed FI solution is to hand over the oil industry to the people of IRAQ through a public share structure is novel and may indeed address the previous issues of having the countries major source of wealth entirely under state control. A few words of caution however.
- the US’ unfeasible timetable for democratisation was probably due to worries about the unpopularity of a long stay in Iraq with the vast majority of the Iraqis and the US population, regardless of how either group feels about democracy or the war on terror. This kind of misrepresentation is just a fact of life in democratic systems based on political parties. Politicians lie to protect themselves!
- Giving every citizen an inalienable stake in the Iraqis oil industry is as difficult as establishing democratic governance after years of the oppresive Ba’th-ist regime. The difficult is in finding a management and shareholder structure that both the international community and the Iraqis people will respect to facilitate effective operation in a country still riddled with corruption. Oil prices are rising and the US will be under a lot of pressure to stabilise Iraqis production while not appearing to be jeopardising the democratic process through self-interest. No mean feat