There is an old sales adage, "undersell, overdeliver". This works well when you are promising something on deadline. Maybe not so well in global foreign politics, because it leaves less room for failure. See below. - KWC Diplomatic Diary: Richard Wolffe Virtual Reality: George W. Bush's political career has always benefited from low expectations. Now he's trying to apply those lessons to post-Saddam Iraq Newsweek Web Exclusive - Oct. 21, 2003 @ http://www.msnbc.com/news/983293.asp?0cv=CB30 Excerpt: Those comparisons with post-war Germany resurface whenever the administration feels the need to lower expectations and re-balance the media coverage of the continued bloodshed in Iraq. Over the summer, Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, compared Iraq's terrorists to the remnants of Hitler's SS, known as the werewolves, who attacked Allied troops in post-war Germany. In fact, as war historians have pointed out, the werewolves were more hype than reality. Their only documented strike was the assassination of the mayor of Aachen, six weeks before the Nazi collapse. Sabotage in post-war Germany died down just one month after the end of the war, and the number of U.S. troops who died in the second half of 1945 was less than 100 among a force of one million (some eight times the size of the force in Iraq).
But what about the Marshall Plan? Isn't it true that the request for $20 billion for Iraq's reconstruction is small change when you compare it to the investment in post-war Europe? Not really. In today's dollars, the Marshall Plan spent around twice that figure, or $40 billion, in its first year. That was spent in more than a dozen countries across Europe, with a combined population of more than 250 million--more than 10 times the number of people than in Iraq today. Remember that the Marshall Plan was designed as an economic plan, not just a way of establishing security in Europe. At the time, the United States enjoyed a vast trade surplus with the rest of the world and it desperately needed to build new markets for its manufacturing plants that were emerging from war-time expansion. Today the United States is suffering a record trade deficit and relies on foreign investors to hold almost half of its debt in U.S. Treasury bonds. If Washington really wants to expand its markets, it could do better by spending the $20 billion in Latin America, where the levels of poverty are far higher than they are in Iraq. That's why the comparisons with the Marshall Plan are far more about massaging expectations than historical reality. In the numbers game of Iraqi aid, the American public needs to have some way of measuring just how expensive the occupation has become. At least one important measure has moved in favor of the Bush administration over the last week. Secretary of State Colin Powell travels to Madrid this week for an international donors' conference on Iraq that until recently seemed doomed to failure. Just a few weeks ago, Powell's aides suggested they were expecting little in the way of substantial donations from the Madrid session. Now it looks as if they will raise several billion dollars over the next few years, including $1.5 billion from Japan and $800 million from Britain. Canada, Spain and the European Union will contribute between $200 million and $300 million each. Even without money from the Gulf states, the United States could emerge from Madrid with promises of more than $3 billion to add to the far bigger American pot. That is good news for Iraq and a big achievement for the Bush administration. Even if their historical comparisons are overblown, they deserve credit for overcoming international opposition to the war just in time to convince the allies to put their cash on the table in Madrid. Yet the harder task remains the expectations game--and the extra cash actually raises the bar for the Bush administration. "$87 billion is a lot of money," says one senior administration official. "We require the support of the American people to get this done----and it's really important to get this done right. We have to explain to the American people why it's so important to their own security and to a peaceful world, and part of that is showing progress in Iraq." Now there is even less room for excuses if life in Iraq--in economic and security terms-- does not improve rapidly within the next six months. Why six months? Because we'll be drawing to an end of the Democratic primaries and the one-year anniversary of the fall of Saddam. Bush hasn't faced such great expectations since 1999, and with some $90 billion in Iraq's pocket, he's only making them greater." (c) 2003 Newsweek, Inc. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
