"Vision without resources is hallucination"
The above-mentioned piece of military wisdom is worth remembering as you ponder what hallucinogenic substance the Pentagon planners were ingesting when they came up with the "Tigris Woods Golf and Country Club" for Baghdad’s Green Zone. And this one looks like a joint (inter service) plan – so no more jokes please about Air Force blueprints for a typical new air base showing “Phase One: golf greens; Phase Two: runway.”
These hallucinatory visions of Iraq in some future era of golf vacations are outlined in today’s Guardian by Michael Howard in “Luxury Hotels and Golf: Welcome to the Green Zone. Pentagon airs plan to turn Baghdad military redoubt into a chic urban oasis.”
Pots of Money
Resources – without which vision is hallucination – are usually not a problem in the Pentagon. Except when it comes to prioritizing them, which then becomes intensely political. Just look at the current flap over a rejuvenated “GI Bill,” which has a bipartisan group of war veteran Senators (joined by Democratic presidential candidates Obama and Clinton) ranged against – you guessed it – President Bush and Senator John McCain, who suddenly want to hoard money. As if the Defense budget wasn’t already in hock to Chinese purchasers of American debt instruments.
And if $5 billion isn’t excessive for a little R&R on the Tigris, why is it so difficult to provide decent (i.e., without sewage backups) housing for soldiers returning to their barracks Stateside? It took an outraged father of a soldier back from a combat zone, armed with a digital camera and a YouTube account, to shame the Army into action.
But we’re mixing up different pots of money. “What color is your money?” an experienced bureaucrat would ask. Not a reference to the monotone greenback, but to the coloration of the particular agency or appropriation that controls the money. For the "Tigris Woods Golf and Country Club" we’re obviously talking about an overflowing pot full of the right color of money. There’s a hint in yesterday’s unveiling of the drawings: “an international investment consortium” smells opportunity in what looks like another “public-private” venture.
I have no crystal ball, and certainly wouldn’t wish a helicopters-off-the-roof outcome for Embassy Baghdad, but if I were a private investor, I would think more than twice about sinking my money into the “Tigris Woods.” Maybe they’ll pick up some “political violence” risk coverage from the US government’s insurer of last resort, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC, not to be confused with OPEC, the people who are bringing you $4.00 per gallon gasoline. But I digress.) Though I’m not an investor, I am a taxpayer, and I would prefer that my tax dollars not be spent on such utterly outrageous frivolities as skateboard parks and country clubs while the country is on fire and sewage flows in the streets.
Meanwhile, in that trailer park on the Tigris
Last year in Vanity Fair, investigative reporter William Langewiesche called it “The Mega-Bunker of Baghdad.” We’re talking, of course, about the new American Embassy due for completion later this year. Langewiesche, writing late last year, speculated that
“For whatever reason..." How about this reason, from the original AP story, for the Disneyfication of the Green Zone:
The above-mentioned piece of military wisdom is worth remembering as you ponder what hallucinogenic substance the Pentagon planners were ingesting when they came up with the "Tigris Woods Golf and Country Club" for Baghdad’s Green Zone. And this one looks like a joint (inter service) plan – so no more jokes please about Air Force blueprints for a typical new air base showing “Phase One: golf greens; Phase Two: runway.”
These hallucinatory visions of Iraq in some future era of golf vacations are outlined in today’s Guardian by Michael Howard in “Luxury Hotels and Golf: Welcome to the Green Zone. Pentagon airs plan to turn Baghdad military redoubt into a chic urban oasis.”
A $5bn tourism and development scheme for the Green Zone being hatched by the Pentagon and an international investment consortium would give the heavily fortified area on the banks of the Tigris a "dream" makeover that will become a magnet for Iraqis, tourists, business people and investors. About half of the area is now occupied by coalition forces, the US State Department or private foreign companies.This is May 6, not April 1, so it can't be an April Fool's prank. Someone has been given money to play with.
... according to Navy Captain Thomas Karnowski, the chief US liaison, "When you have $1bn hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around [ed. note: a reference to the new US embassy compound, under construction], you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time."
Pots of Money
Resources – without which vision is hallucination – are usually not a problem in the Pentagon. Except when it comes to prioritizing them, which then becomes intensely political. Just look at the current flap over a rejuvenated “GI Bill,” which has a bipartisan group of war veteran Senators (joined by Democratic presidential candidates Obama and Clinton) ranged against – you guessed it – President Bush and Senator John McCain, who suddenly want to hoard money. As if the Defense budget wasn’t already in hock to Chinese purchasers of American debt instruments.
And if $5 billion isn’t excessive for a little R&R on the Tigris, why is it so difficult to provide decent (i.e., without sewage backups) housing for soldiers returning to their barracks Stateside? It took an outraged father of a soldier back from a combat zone, armed with a digital camera and a YouTube account, to shame the Army into action.
But we’re mixing up different pots of money. “What color is your money?” an experienced bureaucrat would ask. Not a reference to the monotone greenback, but to the coloration of the particular agency or appropriation that controls the money. For the "Tigris Woods Golf and Country Club" we’re obviously talking about an overflowing pot full of the right color of money. There’s a hint in yesterday’s unveiling of the drawings: “an international investment consortium” smells opportunity in what looks like another “public-private” venture.
I have no crystal ball, and certainly wouldn’t wish a helicopters-off-the-roof outcome for Embassy Baghdad, but if I were a private investor, I would think more than twice about sinking my money into the “Tigris Woods.” Maybe they’ll pick up some “political violence” risk coverage from the US government’s insurer of last resort, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC, not to be confused with OPEC, the people who are bringing you $4.00 per gallon gasoline. But I digress.) Though I’m not an investor, I am a taxpayer, and I would prefer that my tax dollars not be spent on such utterly outrageous frivolities as skateboard parks and country clubs while the country is on fire and sewage flows in the streets.
Meanwhile, in that trailer park on the Tigris
Last year in Vanity Fair, investigative reporter William Langewiesche called it “The Mega-Bunker of Baghdad.” We’re talking, of course, about the new American Embassy due for completion later this year. Langewiesche, writing late last year, speculated that
It is reasonable to assume that insurgents will soon sit in the privacy of rooms overlooking the site, and use cell phones or radios to adjust the rocket and mortar fire of their companions. Meanwhile, however, they seem to have held off, lobbing most of their ordnance elsewhere into the Green Zone, as if reluctant to slow the completion of such an enticing target.Lately, Langewiesche’s prediction has come to pass: here’s Lennox Samuels, writing last week in Newsweek (“Unsafe Haven”)
...rockets and mortars started slamming into the Green Zone on Sunday afternoon and kept coming well into the night, as if the Shiite fighters in Sadr City were making up for the respite. A heavy dust storm choked Baghdad, adding a sense of claustrophobia while providing the insurgents cover. "They're getting closer and closer," noted veteran security expert Mike Arrighi. Arrighi, who works and lives in the tightly defended Zone, says that this week's barrage shows the same "consistency, intensity and ferocity" of the initial attacks that began almost a month ago.Meanwhile, a State Department insider (“The Skeptical Bureaucrat,” a blogger who has worked in the Overseas Building Operations office – OBO, which builds US embassies) notes the policy conundrum:
... the only way left to lower our risk is to reduce the number of people on the site. Any other embassy receiving rocket and mortar fire would be evacuated or put on ordered departure, as U.S. Embassy Sanaa [Yemen] was recently after it was attacked to no effect with only four measly 51mm mortar rounds, but, again, that's not an option in the case of Baghdad.“Not an option.” As in “Failure Is Not An Option.” But since the goalposts for “Success” keep shifting, how will we know when we have failed? And as Langewiesche notes, “For the most part, however, the new embassy is not about leaving Iraq, but about staying on—for whatever reason, under whatever circumstances, at whatever cost.”
“For whatever reason..." How about this reason, from the original AP story, for the Disneyfication of the Green Zone:
For Washington, the driving motivation is to create a "zone of influence" around the new $700 million U.S. Embassy to serve as a kind of high-end buffer for the compound, whose total price tag will reach about $1 billion after all the workers and offices are relocated over the next year.So, there we have it: you plan to spend $5 billion on a “zone of influence” to protect a $1 billion investment. But then again, what is $5 billion for a country club when you’re spending more than twice that amount every month (sorry, when the Chinese are lending us that amount to spend) on ordnance and PX supplies to keep US troops in Iraq?