Hillary Clinton and John Ensign Channel Steve Forbes on the Iraq Oil Trust

In a subscription-only Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday, the two senators advocated something whose absence from the reconstruction mindset in Iraq has been hard to understand:

We have urged for three years that the Bush administration pursue an Iraq Oil Trust, modeled on the Alaskan Permanent Fund, guaranteeing that every individual Iraqi would share in the country’s oil wealth. Oil revenues would accrue to the national government and a significant percentage of oil revenues would be divided equally among ordinary Iraqis, giving every citizen a stake in the nation’s recovery and political reconciliation and instilling a sense of hope for the promise of democratic values.

The implications would be vast.

• The future of Iraq’s oil reserves remains at the heart of the political crisis in Iraq, as the regional and sectarian divides in Iraq play out over the division of resources and revenues. As the Iraq Study Group writes, “The politics of oil has the potential to further damage the country’s already fragile efforts to create a unified central government.” An Iraq Oil Trust would chart an equitable path forward for dividing oil revenues in a way that transcends the divide among Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis.

• As report after report indicates, one of the challenges to building Iraq’s oil revenues has been insurgent attacks against oil infrastructure. A distribution of revenues to all Iraqis would mean they would have a greater incentive to keep the oil flowing, help the economy grow, reject the insurgency, and commit to the future of their nation.

• While demonstrating that the U.S. is not in Iraq for oil, an Iraq Oil Trust would also inhibit corruption and the concentration of oil wealth in the hands of a privileged few.

• Finally, an Iraq Oil Trust would demonstrate the values at the heart of democratic governance: Individuals would have the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Indeed, the study group reports, “Iraqis have not been convinced that they must take responsibility for their own future.” By trusting ordinary Iraqis, ordinary Iraqis would in turn gain greater trust in the national government while seeing something positive about the future at a time when positive signs have been few and far between.

….. We should seize this moment and chart a course that places greater responsibility in the leaders and citizens of Iraq. It’s time to put our trust where our democratic values lie: in the Iraqi people.

I couldn’t agree more. Same for Steve Forbes, whose editorial on this back in September was noted here.

Of all the mistakes one might identify as having been made in Iraq since deposing Saddam, not instituting an oil trust would have to be near the top.

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