October 8, 2003 - War in Iraq is a charitable endeavor at least that is the proposition that the Bush Administration is apparently now trying to sell to the United Nations and the American public. The message is to give now and to give until it hurts. The Congress is asked to borrow another 87 Billion Dollars to go with the 79 Billion that it already borrowed to finance the war in Iraq. Believe me that is giving until it hurts.

When the war started it was described as a preemptive defensive war aimed at the imminent threat that Saddam Hussein was about to use his weapons of mass destruction against the United States and Britain. As it had promised in November the United States went back to the United Nations and asked for a Security Council resolution authorizing the United States and our British cousins to launch the war. When Anglo-American diplomacy was unable to induce the Security Council to wield a rubber stamp for Mr. Bush’s war, the American draft resolution was withdrawn without a vote and the war went on.

Now it is described as a war to bring the blessings of a participatory democracy to the Iraqi people and to reconstruct its economy on a capitalist model. The Administration went back to the United Nations to ask for another rubber stamp for the Bush plan to reconstruct Iraq – and, by the way, to send troops to help “stabilize” the country and money to help rebuild it. When the member nations on the Security Council indicated that the price of an Imprimatur from the Security Council would be the prompt restoration of Iraqi sovereignty the Bush Administration policy makers balked. Now that resolution is being withdrawn as well.

Of the so-called “donor nations” only Turkey is willing to send troops, having yesterday approved a commitment of 10,000 to occupy western Iraq. Even the Iraqis who were dedicated enemies of Saddam Hussein are choking on that idea. The hand-picked Iraqi Governing Council voices its opposition to the introduction of the Turkish Army to Iraqi soil. The Turkish imperial occupation of Iraq is an old memory but still fresh enough to unite all the Iraqi factions in opposition.

It is unlikely that any significant money contributions will be forthcoming from “donor nations”, at least not so long as the money is going to be administered by America’s Viceroy, Paul Bremer and funneled into the pockets of American contractors. The Bush administration’s insistence on unrestricted American control of the reconstruction of Iraq has doomed its cosmetic diplomatic effort.

So the people who are asked to borrow money to hand over to Paul Bremer to build Iraqi schools and roads and utility systems and their energy and communications industry are you and me, the American taxpayers. We are reminded that America is a generous nation. Some one needs to tell the administration that charity begins at home. We are in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and the count is 0 – 2 on America’s diplomatic corps.