"A New Iraq"

An excellent column by James Lindgren in Sunday's Chicago Tribune:

.... People are asking what we should be doing in Iraq and why aren't we doing it faster.

There are calls for a Marshall Plan for Iraq. Yet the historical analogy is more revealing than people realize. The war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945. In 1947, over two years after the war, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed a plan of economic recovery for Europe. By the time Congress passed Marshall's proposal and President Truman signed it into law, nearly three years had passed since VE Day.

Over the following four years, Washington poured a then-staggering $13.3 billion into Europe's recovery. Of course, the U.S. was very much involved in the reconstruction of both Europe and Japan long before the Marshall Plan was a gleam in the secretary of state's eye.

Nor was the U.S. concern in 1948 merely humanitarian; the U.S. was worried about containing communism and the Soviet bloc. Today, the U.S. is again animated by more than charity toward those in need--a successful recovery in Iraq increases stability and reduces terrorism and the threat of weapons of mass horror....

(Thanks, John.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 04/29/03 01:22:48 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.