You might think the "more bodies" argument from the military experts should hold sway, but instead read the far more stunning article that says our personnel in Iraq are finally going to prioritize job creation like crazy. Be amazed to read about the 200 factories the CPA closed, helping create a 70 percent unemployment rate that fuels the insurgency and sectarian strife today. Listen to Pete Chiarelli, who cracked this code on infrastructure and utilities during his first tour, say that more jobs beats more soldiers right now.

I wrote this so long ago I can't even tell you which book it appeared in: "Jobs are the exit strategy in Iraq."

Flabbergasting to think how little priority this goal has received up to now. Few things describe the crux of our postwar occupation better.

To Stem Iraqi Violence, U.S. Aims to Create Jobs
By Josh White and Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 12, 2006; A01

As Iraq descends further into violence and disarray, the Pentagon is turning to a weapon some believe should have been used years ago: jobs.

Members of a small Pentagon task force have gone to the most dangerous areas of Iraq over the past six months to bring life to nearly 200 state-owned factories abandoned by the Coalition Provisional Authority after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Their goal is to employ tens of thousands of Iraqis in coming months, part of a plan to reduce soaring unemployment and lessen the violence that has crippled progress.

Defense officials and military commanders say that festering unemployment -- at 70 percent in some areas -- is leading Iraqi men to take cash from insurgents to place bombs on roads or take shots at U.S. troops. Other Iraqis are joining sectarian attacks because their quality of life has slipped dramatically, officials say.

Army Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the top U.S. field commander in Iraq, said that tackling unemployment could do far more good than adding U.S. combat troops or more aggressively pursuing an elusive enemy. He said the project to open the factories and stimulate local economies is long overdue and was born "of desperation."

"We need to put the angry young men to work," Chiarelli said in a phone interview from Baghdad. "One of the key hindrances to us establishing stability in Iraq is the failure to get the economy going. A relatively small decrease in unemployment would have a very serious effect on the level of sectarian killing going on."

The CPA initially hoped private investors would buy or lease the state factories, but that did not happen as security faltered and much of Iraq became inaccessible. As privatization hopes failed, the factories languished; some were in pristine form and others had been looted when the Pentagon task force examined them this fall. The tens of thousands of Iraqis who used to make them run -- the country's second-largest employment group, after the army -- remained out of work.

Pentagon officials say the vast majority of former Iraqi factory workers are still unemployed and are bringing in no pay. A small portion of the workforce receives government stipends, akin to welfare, but the pay system is badly flawed and provides about 20 percent of what the workers would make if fully employed, the officials said.

Economic development is a departure from the military's usual missions, but officials think the Defense Department's heft as a consumer of goods and services can boost the effort. The department has been reaching out to U.S. companies that can place large orders for products from Iraq.

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England set the task force in motion in June after Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense, returned from a visit to Iraq the month before.

Brinkley, who returned last night from a trip to Iraq with his team, said thousands of Iraqis lost their jobs and the ability to support their families when CPA projections dimmed. Unrest followed the absence of work.

"After three years of unemployment in excess of 50 percent, there are no people in the world that wouldn't be undergoing violence and militias," Brinkley said. "That's human nature. And I think we have to do whatever we have to do to alleviate that problem if we are going to create stability."

So far, members of the task force have visited 26 factories in some of the worst areas of the country, traveling to Baghdad, Fallujah, Mosul, Najaf and Ramadi to inspect facilities that make cement, tile, rubber and textiles. They have identified 10 factories -- their "hot list" of facilities in both Sunni and Shiite areas -- that they think could be open and employing more than 11,000 Iraqis within the next month.

The task force hopes to have a rolling system of factory openings spanning 2007. Part of that effort, its members said, is to reevaluate how the Defense Department spends nearly $4 billion each year to support troops in Iraq.

Brinkley said he hopes that at least 25 percent of that total -- about $1 billion -- could be spent on orders from Iraqi companies that previously have gone to firms in neighboring countries, such as Jordan and Kuwait. "We're not seeking to invest in Iraq, but to buy from Iraq," Brinkley said.

Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, whose office has been critical of the rebuilding effort, said that defense officials are "right on target in pushing this."

"It's about stimulating interest and getting contracts going between U.S. firms and Iraqi firms. That's the goal," he said. "The solution in Iraq is not primarily a military one. It is primarily an economic and political solution."

Bowen said defense officials recently met with about two dozen key business leaders at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to gauge private industry's interest in the program. He acknowledged that corruption and lack of security remain major obstacles to U.S. commercial investment in Iraq but said he is impressed that business leaders "recognize that and are still interested in moving forward."

Caterpillar Inc., a $36 billion construction equipment firm, is one of the first U.S. companies to show interest. Gerald L. Shaheen, a Caterpillar group president and chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said he probably would be looking for low-tech supplies, such as hinges, but said the program dovetails with the company's interest in expanding opportunities in the Middle East.

"But I can't look at this solely as a business proposition. I've already got suppliers," Shaheen said. "I'm doing this because I think there's a social responsibility not only to the Iraqi people but to our troops."

Dow Chemical Co., a $46 billion firm that sells plastics and other products in more than 175 countries, is also considering what supplies it can purchase from Iraq.

"We see this as a positive initiative and very much hope that we can find the appropriate opportunities to support business activity in the country," a Dow spokesman said.

U.S. businesses were looking at Iraq as a significant opportunity before the war began. With vast oil resources, an underserved population and a strategic location, that nation had all the markings of a place for U.S firms to expand. But few have found success there.

Major American companies that went into Iraq on U.S. government contracts, including Bechtel, Parsons and Halliburton subsidiary KBR, had hoped reconstruction work would serve as a natural bridge to private-sector deals in Iraq. Instead, they found rampant violence, with many U.S.-funded projects coming under attack and workers being targeted. The firms also received bad publicity when projects did not go as planned.

Now, with their contracts expiring, Parsons and Bechtel are closing up shop in Iraq and returning home. KBR is doing the same with its reconstruction work, though it continues to hold a major contract supporting the U.S. Army.

"We're pleading with the companies to give Iraq a second or third look," said retired Lt. Gen. Daniel Christman, senior vice president for international affairs at the Chamber of Commerce. "This is very different from asking that they go into Fallujah and build a plant. That's not the intent."

Rep. William D. Delahunt (D-Mass.), incoming chairman of the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, said part of the CPA "disaster" was that obvious ideas, such as creating employment for Iraqis, were ignored.

"It's a concept that common sense would dictate to pursue," Delahunt said. "I think the key question is: Is it too late?"

Chiarelli said unemployment is daunting because many working Iraqis support up to 13 family members, meaning unemployment has exponential effects on the country.

"There's no doubt in my mind that it has the potential to turn the tide," he said. "I find it unbelievable after four years that we haven't come to that realization. . . . To me, it's huge. It's as important as just about any other part of the campaign plan."

December 13, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Learning to Keep Learning

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
I recently attended an Asia Society education seminar in Beijing, during which we heard Chinese educators talk about their “new national strategy.” It’s to make China an “innovation country” — with enough indigenous output to advance China “into the rank of innovation-oriented countries by 2020,” as Shang Yong, China’s vice minister of science and technology, put it.

I listened to this with mixed emotions. Part of me said: “Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to have a government that was so focused on innovation — instead of one that is basically anti-science.” My other emotion was skepticism. Oh, you know the line: Great Britain dominated the 19th century, America dominated the 20th and now China is going to dominate the 21st. It’s game over.

Sorry, but I am not ready to cede the 21st century to China yet.

No question, China has been able to command an impressive effort to end illiteracy, greatly increasing its number of high school grads and new universities. But I still believe it is very hard to produce a culture of innovation in a country that censors Google — which for me is a proxy for curtailing people’s ability to imagine and try anything they want. You can command K-12 education. But you can’t command innovation. Rigor and competence, without freedom, will take China only so far. China will have to find a way to loosen up, without losing control, if it wants to be a truly innovative nation.

But while China can’t thrive without changing a lot more, neither can we. Ask yourself this: If the Iraq war had not dominated our politics, what would our last election have been about? It would have been about this question: Why should any employer anywhere in the world pay Americans to do highly skilled work — if other people, just as well educated, are available in less developed countries for half our wages?

If we can’t answer this question, in an age when more and more routine work can be digitized, automated or offshored, including white-collar work, “it is hard to see how, over time, we are going to be able to maintain our standard of living,” says Marc Tucker, who heads the National Center on Education and the Economy.

There is only one right answer to that question: In a globally integrated economy, our workers will get paid a premium only if they or their firms offer a uniquely innovative product or service, which demands a skilled and creative labor force to conceive, design, market and manufacture — and a labor force that is constantly able to keep learning. We can’t go on lagging other major economies in every math/science/reading test and every ranking of Internet penetration and think that we’re going to field a work force able to command premium wages. Freedom, without rigor and competence, will take us only so far.

Tomorrow, Mr. Tucker’s organization is coming out with a report titled “Tough Choices or Tough Times,” which proposes a radical overhaul of the U.S. education system, with one goal in mind: producing more workers — from the U.P.S. driver to the software engineer — who can think creatively.

“One thing we know about creativity is that it typically occurs when people who have mastered two or more quite different fields use the framework in one to think afresh about the other,” said Mr. Tucker. Thus, his report focuses on “how to make that kind of thinking integral to every level of education.”

That means, he adds, revamping an education system designed in the 1900s for people to do “routine work,” and refocusing it on producing people who can imagine things that have never been available before, who can create ingenious marketing and sales campaigns, write books, build furniture, make movies and design software “that will capture people’s imaginations and become indispensable for millions.”

That can’t be done without higher levels of reading, writing, speaking, math, science, literature and the arts. We have no choice, argues Mr. Tucker, because we have entered an era in which “comfort with ideas and abstractions is the passport to a good job, in which creativity and innovation are the key to the good life” and in which the constant ability to learn how to learn will be the only security you have.

Economics is not like war. It can be win-win. We, China, India and Europe can all flourish. But the ones who flourish most will be those who develop the best broad-based education system, to have the most people doing and designing the most things we can’t even imagine today. China still has to make some very big changes to get there — but so do we.

PolicyWatch #1018

Changing the Guard at the Saudi Embassy in Washington

By Simon Henderson
July 25, 2005

On July 20, the Saudi foreign ministry announced that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the long-serving Saudi ambassador to the United States, was stepping down, and that “the process of nominating” Prince Turki al-Faisal, the current Saudi ambassador in London, to replace him had begun. When the widely anticipated death of the recently hospitalized, eighty-four-year-old King Fahd occurs, both Prince Turki and Prince Bandar, as senior “next generation” princes, could be crucial players.
Bandar’s Future?

Prince Bandar made his post the envy of diplomatic Washington: he spent little time there, but his contacts and access were superb. Signals of his departure had been evident for some time, but the fact that he was not immediately appointed to another senior post came as a surprise. After twenty-two years as ambassador, he has vast experience, and many believed he aspired to the post of foreign minister (currently held by Prince Saud al-Faisal, brother of Prince Turki). Observers in Washington have speculated for months that Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler, offered to appoint Bandar head of the General Intelligence Department, the Saudi equivalent of the CIA. The post has been vacant since January; Bandar was reportedly reluctant to accept it, however.

Prince Turki: Courting Controversy

The early public naming of Prince Turki, before Washington formally agrees to his nomination, appears to be a breach of diplomatic protocol. Perhaps President Bush indicated approval during his April meeting in Texas with Crown Prince Abdullah. If not, Riyadh’s move could lead to a delay in the appointment. At worst, aspects of Prince Turki’s resume could face greater scrutiny. After all, he served as head of the General Intelligence Department from 1977 until ten days before the September 11 attacks. He was also the chief Saudi interlocutor with the Taliban in Afghanistan and, as such, was initially named as a defendant in U.S. civil suits filed on behalf of victims of the attacks and their relatives. His name, along with those of other Saudi officials, was dropped from the suits after a judge ruled that such figures had sovereign immunity, whatever the truth of the allegations against them. Prince Turki has always ridiculed the charges against him and asserted that the continuing complaint against some 200 Saudi individuals and institutions is also without foundation. In a July 24 interview with the Saudi newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat, he committed another breach of protocol for a nominated but not-yet-accepted ambassador when he stated, “The U.S. judiciary, like the Saudi judiciary, is independent. If these courts closed these cases, we would have achieved what we are seeking.”

The most detailed account of Prince Turki’s activities in Afghanistan was laid out in Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, for which Washington Post journalist Steve Coll won a 2005 Pulitzer prize. In one passage, the book discusses Turki’s 1998 trip to the Afghan city of Kandahar, during which the prince claims he won a commitment from Taliban leader Mullah Omar to hand over Osama bin Laden, then wanted by the Saudis. The deal collapsed, and Coll writes of suspicions in Washington over Turki’s version of events and, indeed, a possible meeting he may have had at the time with bin Laden himself. The prince was also the CIA’s primary liaison to the Saudi government. According to Coll, “The Saudis worked assiduously to maintain diverse contacts within the CIA, outside of official channels. Several retired Riyadh station chiefs and senior Near East Division managers went on the Saudi payroll as consultants during the mid-1990s.” A footnote makes it clear they “were consultants for Prince Turki.”

Coll also offers some explanation of why Prince Turki was reportedly dismissed from his General Intelligence post immediately before September 11, even though his departure was officially described as being “at his request.” Coll writes: “Turki’s vast personal riches . . . bothered some of his rivals in the royal family. They felt the Saudi intelligence department had become a financial black hole. . . . Turki’s rivals clamored for accountability at the [General Intelligence Department].”

On Middle East issues, particularly Israeli-Palestinian peace, Prince Turki tends to take a hardline stance, blaming the international community in a recent London speech for “showing indifference to Israeli aggression and inhuman treatment towards Palestinians, [while] swift action has been taken when UN resolutions have been violated in other areas.” Educated at Princeton, Georgetown, and Oxford, he has a reputation for sophistication that occasionally seems at odds with some of his public remarks. For example, in the June 19 edition of Arab Business, he made an arguably gratuitous remark to a journalist interviewing him for a profile. Explaining why he had just shaken hands with a rabbi at a conference in Jordan, he said, “[O]ur Prophet, peace be upon him, made a treaty with the Jews and Rabbis in Medina, and he held his part of the bargain until they broke that treaty, and then he took action against them.”

U.S. Saudi Relations Post–September 11

The intended ambassadorial changeover is occurring at a time when U.S.-Saudi relations remain awkward, as they have been since the September 11 attacks. On July 14, Undersecretary of the Treasury Stuart Levey told a Senate committee that Saudi individuals remain “a significant source” of funds for Islamist terrorists.

Moreover, if and when he assumes the post, Prince Turki will take over an embassy battered by negative publicity. Following the September 11 attacks, investigators discovered that charity checks drawn by a staff member on a bank account of Prince Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa (coincidentally, a sister of Prince Turki), had found their way to two of the hijackers. Later, the embassy’s accounts with the now defunct Riggs Bank were investigated because of suspicious payments and large cash withdrawals. For months thereafter, the embassy could not find a bank to handle its accounts; it only recently began using the local branch of a British-based bank.

The U.S.-Saudi relationship remains important, of course, because of the kingdom’s role as the world’s largest oil exporter and a leader of the Islamic world. Prior to September 2001, Prince Bandar was a key architect of the relationship, often to the detriment of his counterparts at the U.S. embassy in Riyadh. His departure should be seen as an opportunity for U.S. officials to recast the manner in which the relationship is administered diplomatically. The nomination of Prince Turki is a clear indication of how Riyadh views the road ahead. But the United States needs to consider whether such a high-profile ambassador is even necessary.

Simon Henderson is a London-based senior fellow of The Washington Institute and author of its 1994 policy paper After King Fahd: Succession in Saudi Arabia.

December 13, 2006
Saudis Outlined Consequences of U.S. Withdrawal From Iraq

By HELENE COOPER
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 — Saudi Arabia has told the Bush administration that it might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq’s Shiites if the United States pulls its troops out of Iraq, according to American and Arab diplomats.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia conveyed that message to Vice President Dick Cheney two weeks ago during Mr. Cheney’s whirlwind visit to Riyadh, the officials said. During the visit, King Abdullah also expressed strong opposition to diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran, and pushed for Washington to encourage the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, senior Bush administration officials said.

The Saudi warning reflects fears among America’s Sunni Arab allies about Iran’s rising influence in Iraq, coupled with Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. King Abdullah II of Jordan has also expressed concern about rising Shiite influence, and about the prospect that the Shiite-dominated government would use Iraqi troops against the Sunni population.

A senior Bush administration official said Tuesday that part of the administration’s review of Iraq policy involved the question of how to harness a coalition of moderate Iraqi Sunnis with centrist Shiites to back the Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

The Saudis have argued strenuously against an American pullout of Iraq, citing fears that Iraq’s minority Sunni population would be massacred. Those fears, United States officials said, have become more pronounced as a growing chorus in Washington has advocated a draw-down of American troops in Iraq, coupled with diplomatic outreach to Iran, which is largely Shiite.

“It’s a hypothetical situation, and we’d work hard to avoid such a structure,” one Arab diplomat in Washington said. But, he added, “If things become so bad in Iraq, like an ethnic cleansing, we will feel we are pulled into the war.”

The Bush administration is also working on a way to form a coalition of Sunni Arab nations and a moderate Shiite government in Iraq, along with the United States and Europe, to stand against “Iran, Syria and the terrorists,” another senior administration official said Tuesday.

Until now Saudi officials have promised their counterparts in the United States that they would refrain from aiding Iraq’s Sunni insurgency. But that pledge holds only as long as the United States remains in Iraq.

The Saudis have been wary of supporting Sunnis in Iraq because their insurgency there has been led by extremists of Al Qaeda, who are opposed to the kingdom’s monarchy. But if Iraq’s sectarian war worsened, the Saudis would line up with Sunni tribal leaders.

The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, who told his staff on Monday that he was resigning his post, recently fired Nawaf Obaid, a consultant who wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post two weeks ago contending that “one of the first consequences” of an American pullout of Iraq would “be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis.”

Mr. Obaid also suggested that Saudi Arabia could cut world oil prices in half by raising its production, a move that he said “would be devastating to Iran, which is facing economic difficulties even without today’s high oil prices.” The Saudi government disavowed Mr. Obaid’s column, and Prince Turki canceled his contract.

But Arab diplomats said Tuesday that Mr. Obaid’s column reflected the view of the Saudi government, which has made clear its opposition to an American pullout from Iraq.

In a speech in Philadelphia last week, Prince Turki reiterated the Saudi position against an American withdrawal from Iraq. “Just picking up and leaving is going to create a huge vacuum,” he told the World Affairs Council. “The U.S. must underline its support for the Maliki government because there is no other game in town.”

Prince Turki said Saudi Arabia did not want Iraq to fracture along ethnic or religious lines. On Monday a group of prominent Saudi clerics called on Sunni Muslims around the world to mobilize against Shiites in Iraq. The statement called the “murder, torture and displacement of Sunnis” an “outrage.”

The resignation of Prince Turki, a former Saudi intelligence chief and a son of the late King Faisal, was supposed to be formally announced Monday, officials said, but that had not happened by late Tuesday.

“They’re keeping us very puzzled,” a Saudi official said. Prince Turki’s resignation was first reported Monday in The Washington Post.

If Prince Turki does depart, he will leave after 15 months on the job, in contrast to the 22 years that his predecessor, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, spent as ambassador in Washington.

In Riyadh, there was a sense of disarray over Prince Turki’s resignation that was difficult to hide. A former adviser to the royal family said that Prince Turki had submitted his resignation several months ago but that it was refused. Rumors had circulated ever since that Prince Turki intended to resign, as talk of a possible government shake-up grew.

Prince Saud al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister and Prince Turki’s brother, has been in poor health for some time. He is described as eager to resign, with his wife’s health failing, too, just as the United States has been prodding Saudi Arabia to take a more active role in Iraq and with Iran.

The former adviser said Prince Turki’s resignation came amid a growing rivalry between the ambassador and Prince Bandar, who is now Saudi Arabia’s national security adviser. Prince Bandar, well known in Washington for his access to the White House, has vied to become the next foreign minister.

“This is a very high-level problem; this is about Turki, the king and Bandar,” said the former adviser to the royal family. “Let’s say the men don’t have a lot of professional admiration for each other.”

Hassan M. Fattah contributed reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.