Today in Congressional hearings about President Bush's request for $87 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif), as well as others, brought up the issue of the U.S. government taking Iraqi oil revenue to pay for the occupation and reconstruction. Surprisingly, I agree with Bush's public statements that this is a bad idea, although likely for different reasons. First, the immediately raised objections to taking Iraqi oil revenue is that the country is already burdened by around $200 billion in debt, large portions of which were incurred under Saddam Hussein, no doubt. While this is enough of a reason, supporters of taking oil revenue see no reason why the U.S. should be shelling out billions of dollars to occupy and rebuild Iraq while there are oil revenues paying off Saddam Hussein's debts. Beyond the fact that there are already negotiations about rescheduling the Iraqi debt planned, by invading and occupying Iraq, we have the responsibility to pay for our own occupation and reconstruction efforts. Why demand that a country under our occupation should have to pay for us to occupy it when they had no part in deciding whether we invaded or not?

Returning to the objection raised publicly by the Bush administration that we should not take money from Iraq that could be used to repay its debts when it is so heavily in debt, there is some truth to that as well. Many less developed countries are facing crippling levels of debt (what the World Bank calls the Highly Indebted Poor Countries [HIPC]). A high level of national debt passed on to the future Iraqi government would decrease the likelihood first off that the country would see much, if any, chance of good government services. From this problem arises another one: if the government is seen as not providing necessary services, it would be more likely to be toppled, undoing all of what we say we are there to promote.

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©2003 Richard B. Goud, Jr.
Updated 21:06 PST on 24 September 2003