Time to Get Tough Read Free

women will have died in vain and $1.5 trillion will have been squandered.
    So, if Iran is going to take over the oil, I say we take over the oil first by hammering out a cost-sharing plan with Iraq. If we protect and control the oil fields, Iraq will get to keep a good percentage of its oil—not to mention its independence from Iran—and we will recoup some of the cost of liberating the Iraqis and also pay back the nations that fought with us in the war. And I want to repay the families of the soldiers who died or were terribly wounded. Of course, nothing can ever replace a lost life or a lost limb, but we can send the children of dead or badly wounded veterans to college, provide compensation to the spouses of our service members killed in Iraq, and make sure that wounded veterans are properly looked after. It’s common sense, and peanuts compared to what is lying under Iraq’s land. Each American family who lost a loved one in Iraq should be given $5 million, and our wounded veterans should be given money, perhaps $2 million each plus medical costs.

    Call me old school, but I believe in the old warrior’s credo that “to the victor go the spoils.” In other words, we don’t fight a war, hand over the keys to people who hate us, and leave. We win a war, take the oil to repay the financial costs we’ve incurred, and in so doing, treat Iraq and everybody else fairly. As General Douglas MacArthur said, “There is no substitute for victory.” From the very beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I believed we should have hammered out the repayment plan with the Iraqis—through exiled Iraqi dissidents— before we launched the war and rid the people of Iraq of their murderous dictator, Saddam Hussein. And back then, there were a few smart people who agreed with me and said the same thing. One of them was the director of the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment, Andrew Marshall. He recommended that oil revenues should be used to reduce the sticker price for occupation. 1 Of course, that hasn’t happened. Still, there’s no reason we can’t or shouldn’t implement a cost-sharing arrangement with Iraq. Do not take no for an answer.
    It’s hardly a radical idea. In September 2010, our own Government Accountability Office (GAO) and others studied the issue in depth and concluded that a cost-sharing plan is feasible and wise. All the know-nothings in the White House need to do is read the cover of the report: “Iraqi-U.S. Cost-Sharing: Iraq Has a Cumulative Budget Surplus, Offering the Potential for Further Cost-Sharing.” That’s literally the title. And if they actually read the first line of the report, they would know the GAO found that the Iraqi government is running a budget surplus of $52.1 billion. 2 Iraq just came through a lengthy war and they’re already back in
business and flush with cash. Why are we footing the bill and getting nothing in return?
    I’ll give you the answer. It’s because our so-called “leaders” in Washington know absolutely nothing about negotiation and dealmaking. Look, I do deals—big deals—all the time. I know and work with all the toughest operators in the world of high-stakes global finance. These are hard-driving, vicious, cutthroat financial killers, the kind of people who leave blood all over the boardroom table and fight to the bitter end to gain maximum advantage. And guess what? Those are exactly the kind of negotiators the United States needs, not these cream puff “diplomats” Obama sends around the globe to play patty cake with foreign governments. No, we need smart people with titanium spines and big brains who love America enough to fight fiercely for our interests. Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz used to ask diplomats into his office and, standing before a map, ask them what country they represented. When they pointed to their assigned