With the U.S Army departing in whole or in part by year's end, most of the array of Army air assets State used will need to be replaced. A recently released State Department Office of the Inspector General's (OIG) "Report on Department of State Planning for the Transition to a Civilian-led Mission in Iraq Performance Evaluation " explains that our diplomats will, in the future, have their own little Air America in Iraq, a fleet of 46 aircraft, including:
* 20 medium lift S-61 helicopters (essentially Black Hawks, possibly armed)
* 18 light lift UH-1N helicopters (new models of 'Nam era Hueys, possibly armed)
* Three light observation MD-530 helicopters (Little Birds, armed, for quick response strike teams... er, um, observation duties)
* Five Dash 8 fixed-wing aircraft (50-passenger capacity to move personnel into the "theater" from Jordan)
The OIG report also notes that State will need to construct landing zones, maintenance hangars, operation buildings, and air traffic control towers, along with an independent aviation logistics system for maintenance and fueling. And yes, the diplomats are supposed to supervise this, too, the goal being to prevent an Iraqi from being gunned down from an attack helo with diplomatic license plates. What could go wrong?
How Much?
At this point, has cost started to cross your mind? Well, some 74% of embassy Baghdad's operating costs will be going to "security." State requested $2.7 billion from Congress for its Iraq operations in FY 2011, but got only $2.3 billion from a budget-minded Capitol Hill. Facing the possibility of being all alone in a dangerous universe in FY 2012, the Department has requested $6.3 billion for Iraq. Congress has yet to decide what to do. To put these figures in perspective, the State Department total operating budget for this year is only about $14 billion (the cost of running the place, absent the foreign aid money), so $6.3 billion for one more year in Iraq is a genuine chunk of change.
How Does It End?
Which only leaves the question of why.
Pick your forum -- TomDispatch readers at a kegger, Fox news pundits following the Palin bus, high school students preparing to take SATs, unemployed factory workers in a food-stamp line -- and ask if any group of Americans (not living in official Washington) would conclude that Iraq was our most important foreign policy priority, and so deserving of our largest embassy with the largest staff and largest budget on the planet.
Does Iraq threaten U.S. security? Does it control a resource we demand? (Yes, it's got lots of oil underground, but produces remarkably little of the stuff.) Is Iraq enmeshed in some international coalition we need to butter up? Any evil dictators or WMDs around? Does Iraq hold trillions in U.S. debt? Anything? Anyone? Bueller?
Eight disastrous years after we invaded, it is sad but altogether true that Iraq does not matter much in the end. It is a terrible thing that we poured 4,459 American lives and trillions of dollars into the war, and without irony oversaw the deaths of at least a hundred thousand, and probably hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis in the name of freedom. Yet we are left with only one argument for transferring our occupation duties from the Department of Defense to the Department of State: something vague about our "investment in blood and treasure."
Think of this as the Vegas model of foreign policy: keep the suckers at the table throwing good money after bad. Leaving aside the idea that "blood and treasure" sounds like a line from Pirates of the Caribbean, one must ask: What accomplishment are we protecting?
The war's initial aim was to stop those weapons of mass destruction from being used against us. There were none, so check that off the list. Then it was to get rid of Saddam. He was hanged in 2006, so cross off that one. A little late in the game we became preoccupied with ensuring an Iraq that was "free." And we've had a bunch of elections and there is a government of sorts in place to prove it, so that one's gotta go, too.
What follows won't be "investment," just more waste. The occupation of Iraq, centered around that engorged embassy, is now the equivalent of a self-licking ice cream cone, useful only to itself.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
