enemy of victory in iraq?: the U.S. Government

the state department has begun attacking the defense dept. (specifically Paul Brinkley) for opening state businesses and giving jobs to unemployed Iraqis under the all-to-likely assumption that more jobs = less insurgency.

• Paul Brinkley, a deputy undersecretary of defense..., has reopen[ed] dozens of government-owned factories in Iraq....
• Brinkley and his colleagues at the Pentagon believe that rehabilitating shuttered, state-run enterprises could reduce violence by employing tens of thousands of Iraqis. Officials at State counter that the initiative is antithetical to free-market reforms the United States should promote in Iraq.
• The bureaucratic knife fight over the best way to revive Iraq's moribund economy illustrates how the two principal players in the reconstruction of Iraq -- the departments of Defense and State -- remain at odds over basic economic and political measures. The bickering has hamstrung initiatives to promote stability four years after Saddam Hussein's fall....
• The U.S. Agency for International Development estimates that nearly half of Iraqis are unemployed or work fewer than 15 hours a week, but those figures do not include hundreds of thousands who once worked for state-owned enterprises and continue to collect about 40 percent of their original salaries. If they are counted, Brinkley believes, the true figure for unemployed and underemployed Iraqis may approach 70 percent. ("Defense Skirts State in Reviving Iraqi Industry," By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, May 14, 2007; Page A01)

a quick check of the blogs finds this idea attacked from the left and the right. bottom line: great idea, but a little late as now it will just be one more target for the insurgents.