If you are a Republican, you may already be a nation builder
Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq is an article that is long overdue. It is the story of one aspect of our difficulties in Iraq - how it came to pass that the transition team under Paul Bremer was shot through with inexperienced, but ideologically pure GOP leaders who subsequently set about the business of turning Iraq into a conservative theme park. This ranks as one of the great un-investigated stories of 2003. The thought of the Bush administration giving ideological litmus tests at a time of desperate need should make you cringe. Competence is a non-partisan commodity. It makes me very sad to read it.
One would hope that Minnesota's own Mark Kennedy and Michelle Bachman, particularly, will be recognized between the lines in this article. They both place much higher value on party allegiance and ideological purity than they do on competence.
posted by Chris Dykstra @ 12:29 AM |
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3 Comments:
Shall look at the article I will highlight the first person the article takes to task, Jay Hallen.
"Quickly absorbing the CPA's ambition during the optimistic days before the insurgency flared, Hallen decided that he didn't just want to reopen the exchange, he wanted to make it the best, most modern stock market in the Arab world. He wanted to promulgate a new securities law that would make the exchange independent of the Finance Ministry, with its own bylaws and board of directors. He wanted to set up a securities and exchange commission to oversee the market. He wanted brokers to be licensed and listed companies to provide financial disclosures. He wanted to install a computerized trading and settlement system"
Is there something wrong with his goals to create a modern independent and accountable exchange?
Further in the article...
"But Hallen was convinced that major changes had to be enacted. "Their laws and regulations were completely out of step with the modern world," he said. "There was just no transparency in anything. It was more of a place for Saddam and his friends to buy up private companies that they otherwise didn't have a stake in."
Opening the stock exchange without legal and structural changes, Hallen maintained, "would have been irresponsible and short-sighted."
Again something wrong with his goals and understanding of how a prper stock exchange should be run?
Perhaps he was over eager to do the right thing rather than work to get the system up and running as fast as some wanted. Yes, the board did set up the way they wanted but no mention in the article about his failures other then not moving as fast as some wanted.
Just another slanted article from the Washington Post.
Dave
The article isn't slanted. You are, Dave.
His goals are worthy and high. In this case, however, their worthiness is entirely academic. He's a 24 year-old kid that doesn't have any experience in finance OR more importantly, implementing complex institutions in failed states.
His plan is rookie pie-in-the-sky, doomed from the minute it was concieved by its own ambition. An older hand would have focused on getting the exchange open so money didn't flee the country, then implemented the changes neccessary to sculpt it towards a more open, western model.
The point is that the failure that is mentioned, not going fast enough, is the entire failure. He was fiddling while Iraq burned - planning his unworkable and unaccepted perfect plans while the exchange was dark. That is basically the definition of incompetence.
By the way, it's also what made Carter a bad president. He planned and planned and planned and....little or nothing was practical. Nothing wrong with his goals, though.
Would the Washington Post and you for that matter give him credit if he just opened the exchange as you suggest and all the old cronies sweeped in and abused the system to thier benefit. I doubt it, instead anything that happened that was not perfect would in fact have been used to bash.
I bet what he did get accomplish in the way of a governing board and some basic laws founded on the priciples used in the west will go a long way to making the exchenge a valued part of a successful Iraq.
Dave
BTW a good point about Carter
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