Turning the tables...

Should Iraq Pay For Its Own Reconstruction?

Iraq is sitting on a bunch of oil which is worth quite a lot these days. This has prompted Senators Carl Levin (D - Michigan) and John Warner (R - Virginia) to ask, "Where's the money?" Estimates are that Iraq will earn at least $100 million because of oil for 2007 and 2008 combined. To date, we've spend around $47 billion trying to reconstruct Iraq. Iraq can't even figure out how to spend the $10.1 billion it has allocated for reconstruction.

Is it fair to require Iraq to spend on its own reconstruction or will this just create resentment like in the post-Civil War South?

How can we enforce the requirements we've put on Iraq? On the one hand, if we say, "Do this by X date or we will leave," we've given the terrorists a timetable. We've told them that all they have to do is create enough havoc until that date. On the other hand, if we don't somehow enforce it, then we give the Iraqi government no incentive to not have us foot the bill.

I honestly believe that there are people in Iraq that want to be free, but does Iraq as a country really want to be free? Is this just a case of being under a dictator for so long that it takes a while to get the concept of freedom like post-Soviet Russia?

I believe that we want Iraq to be stable. I believe that if we leave now, we'll have sent a message that the terrorists won and we'll just have to redo what we've done before. That being said, if Iraq wants a ruler, I'm not sure I like the idea of having the U.S. holding Iraq as a territory, at least from a PR standpoint.

Are we ready to end Internet anonymity?

Ever since the "Web" went public and stopped being DARPANET, there has been an ongoing debate over the assumption of anonymity that is implicit in the web. The structure and standards of the web promote anonymity, which as lead to an explosion of creativity, free speech, and free thought on the Net which is nearly unimaginable in the real world. The Web is where you can badmouth your employer without being fired, give an honest critique of a book or movie without fear of being personally attacked by the author, and where you can leak documents critical to public safety without fear of your identity being immediately known.

But the Web has also become a place where sex predators can stalk children without fear of being caught, where a 50-year-old man can pretend to be a teenage boy and ruin the life of a teenage girl, or where anonymous bullies can drive a teenager to suicide.

Kentucky Representative Tim Couch thinks it is time to end internet anonymity in order to bring back responsibility and protect minors. But such an action would also effectively end many of the advantages of the Web as seen in whistleblowers being free to tell us what we need to know. Is Rep. Couch right, or are we throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

Honestly, I think this would be a revealing issue to raise in the new debate in the Presidential campaign.