It was doomed from the start by a fatal constitutional flaw: proportional representation.

Washington waits and waits while constantly demanding that Iraq’s government function properly—that its leaders compromise and work together, that it at least provide electricity, trash pick-up, and minimal services to its citizens. Yet all this is impossible because of the structure of government America set up there. Hopelessly dysfunctional, it was doomed from the start.

There is simply no way Iraq’s government could or can succeed. Think first how we destroyed  its civil structure—its police, civil service, most of its functions of government, even schoolteachers were fired en masse. Then it’s easier to comprehend that Washington also set up an unworkable government. Indeed, an article in the *American Prospect*, “The Apprentice,” indicates that wrecking Iraq as a nation state was intentional. According to the article, David Wurmser, who subsequently became Vice President Cheney’s principal foreign-policy adviser [urged] in 1997: that if Saddam Hussein were driven from power, Iraq would be “ripped apart by the politics of warlords, tribes, clans, sects, and key families,” and out of the “coming chaos in Iraq and most probably in Syria,” the United States and her principal allies, namely Israel and Jordan, could redraw the region’s map.

Generally there is little American understanding or concern for how foreign governments function, especially their electoral systems. Our policy is usually just to promote an election and then classify a nation as having achieved democracy. Rarely do we define the institutional requirements that can guarantee limited government, protection of minority views and populations, accountability of government officials, the rule of law, property rights, an independent judiciary, and the host of other prerequisites necessary to make democracies work.

Indeed, not only does Washington typically ignore the traditions of government that already exist in the nations we attempt to reconstruct, but our bureaucrats do not even heed the lessons of Anglo-American political history. Instead of devising a system at all like our own, professional state-builders take inspiration from an idea hatched in the faculty lounge: proportional representation.

*Iraq’s constitution has several mortal failings*—

Proportional representation (PR) is a system whereby voting is based on party lists of candidates chosen by the party’s leadership. Voters do not get to choose individual candidates and may not know anything about many of the names on the list. A party receives a number of seats in the legislature proportional to its percentage of the popular vote. The candidates awarded seats are taken in order from the top of the party’s list. The PR system is much liked by political leaders because they can always put their own names high on the list and thus virtually ensure their perpetual re-election. But even lower-ranking candidates are not fully accountable to the voters because their first allegiance is to the party bosses who manage the lists.

This electoral system is bad enough in the best of circumstances, but to make matters worse the whole of Iraq is treated as a single electoral district, the worst kind of PR. (In some PR systems there are multiple districts and candidates may have some concern for local interests.) PR can provide effective government in small, homogeneous nations such as in Scandinavia, but for larger nations it is not effective. The system causes most voters to vote along ethnic or tribal lines because they fear that others are voting that way too. For example, if Shi’ites are voting for other Shi’ites, Sunnis will tend to vote for other Sunnis to counter them.

Contrast this to the systems of the United States and Great Britain, where majority coalitions can fracture and recombine along lines of local and economic self-interest. In the Anglo-Saxon system, voters are represented by candidates whom they can know, who are accountable to their districts, focused on local issues, and who can be voted out individually.

PR, by contrast, gives inordinate swing power in coalition government to very small minority parties (as I explain with other factors in earlier article, “Problems of Proportional Representation”). An excellent analysis by Michael Greve at the American Enterprise Institute considers other flaws with the PR systems that “well-meaning UN officials, NGOs, and U.S. advisers” have imposed on “numerous fledgling democracies, including Iraq.” He warned that Iraq’s “constitution puts a hydra-headed executive at the mercy of the parliament.” Moreover, Greve explains, Iraq’s PR system makes a mockery of federalism: “In conflicts between regional and federal law, regional law shall prevail—thus providing potent incentives to extort fiscal transfers.”

Kanan Makia of Brandeis University detailed other problems five years ago in the *New York Times*. He foresaw that the constitution would “further weaken the already failing central Iraqi state” because it created “a supremely powerful Parliament” which was in reality an “artificially constructed collection of ethnic and sectarian voting block.” The president and prime minister can be dismissed by a simple majority vote in the single-house Parliament. In addition, “the constitution encourages the transformation of governorates and local administrations into powerful, nearly sovereign regions … while the articles dealing with executive power … encourage new regions to be created at the expense of the federal union.”

“The constitution may well be more of a prelude to civil war than a step forward,”* *warned another expert in 2005, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Rather than an inclusive document, it is more a recipe for separation based on Shiite and Kurdish privilege,” he wrote, as quoted in an article by Robin Wright in the Washington Post The *Post* report also warned that “the Shiite and Kurdish militias are the de facto security forces in their territories and are loyal to their own political leaders.”* *

By 2006, then CIA director Michael Hayden was acknowledging that in Iraq, “the inability of the government to govern seems irreversible.” He added, “We and the Iraqi government do not agree on who the enemy is …

It’s a legitimate question whether strengthening the Iraqi security forces helps or hurts, when they are viewed as a predatory element.”

In 2007, Ayad Allawi, Iraq’s former president, now vying for power, also explained in the *New York Times* how proportional representation stymied effective government.

It is scarcely worth mentioning that Iraq is far different from the cases of Japan and Germany after World War II. Comparing them is preposterous. Germany and Japan were functioning, ordered states with cohesive populations. They confronted a Communist danger that threatened to swallow them if they failed to rebuild. They also had strong, competent American generals in charge of occupation—and it is interesting to note that General Patton refused demands from Washington that he dismiss all low-level German government official, many of whom had been Nazi Party members, as was done with Baathists in Iraq. In Japan, General MacArthur also kept on regional government functionaries. He drafted a realistic constitution criticized by many Japanese for not using vague and consensus-focused language in accordance with their traditions. Yet to this day, the Japanese have not substantially changed it.

The nearly decade-long U.S. occupation of Iraq has been in vain. We are certainly not “building democracy.” Nor has the entire misadventure served our own national interest. Indeed, we are now nearly bankrupted and less safe as al-Qaeda grows and Muslims all over the world see Iraq’s American-created “democracy” as dysfunctional and discredited. Who today would trust the U.S. to create a democracy in Afghanistan or Iran?

Washington’s neoconservatives may look benignly on an Iraq whose dysfunctional government serves as an excuse to keep the region occupied with 50,000 troops and massive air bases. But America’s “mission accomplished” has created an unstable, economically devastated nation that will be yet another constant source of instability for the whole Middle East.

Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative.

Throughout my career I have been known to walk that fine line between good taste and unemployment. I see no reason to change that now.

Consider the following therapeutic.

I have been assigned as a staff officer to a headquarters in Afghanistan for about two months. During that time, I have not done anything productive. Fortunately little of substance is really done here, but that is a task we do well.

We are part of the operational arm of the International Security Assistance Force commanded by U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus. It is composed of military representatives from all the NATO countries, several of which I cannot pronounce.

Officially, IJC was founded in late 2009 to coordinate operations among all the regional commands in Afghanistan. More likely it was founded to provide some general a three-star command. Starting with a small group of dedicated and intelligent officers, IJC has successfully grown into a stove-piped and bloated organization, top-heavy in rank. Around here you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a colonel.

For headquarters staff, war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information. Even one tiny flaw in a slide can halt a general's thought processes as abruptly as a computer system's blue screen of death.

The ability to brief well is, therefore, a critical skill. It is important to note that skill in briefing resides in how you say it. It doesn't matter so much what you say or even if you are speaking Klingon.

Random motion, ad hoc processes and an in-depth knowledge of Army minutia and acronyms are also key characteristics of a successful staff officer. Harried movement together with furrowed brows and appropriate expressions of concern a la Clint Eastwood will please the generals. Progress in the war is optional.

Each day is guided by the "battle rhythm," which is a series of PowerPoint briefings and meetings with PowerPoint presentations . It doesn't matter how inane or useless the briefing or meeting might be. Once it is part of the battle rhythm, it has the persistence of carbon 14.

And you can't skip these events because they take roll -- just like gym class.

The start and culmination of each day is the commander's update assessment. Please ignore the fact that "update assessment" is redundant. Simply saying commander's update doesn't provide the possibility of creating a three-letter acronym. It also doesn't matter that the commander never attends the CUA.

The CUA consists of a series of PowerPoint slides describing the events of the previous 12 hours. Briefers explain each slide by reading from a written statement in a tone not unlike that of a congressman caught in a tryst with an escort. The CUA slides only change when a new commander arrives or the war ends.

The commander's immediate subordinates, usually one- and two-star generals, listen to the CUA in a semi-comatose state. Each briefer has approximately 1 or 2 minutes to impart either information or misinformation. Usually they don't do either. Fortunately, none of the information provided makes an indelible impact on any of the generals.

One important task of the IJC is to share information to the ISAF commander, his staff and to all the regional commands. This information is delivered as PowerPoint slides in e-mail at the flow rate of a fire hose. Standard operating procedure is to send everything that you have. Volume is considered the equivalent of quality.

Next month IJC will attempt a giant leap for mankind. In a first-of-its-kind effort, IJC will embed a new stovepipe into an already existing stovepipe. The rationale for this bold move resides in the fact that an officer, who is currently without one, needs a staff of 35 people to create a big splash before his promotion board.

Like most military organizations, structure always trumps function.

The ultimate consequences of this reorganization won't be determined until after that officer rotates out of theater.

Nevertheless, the results will be presented by PowerPoint.

(Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D., is a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and a veteran of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is currently serving his second deployment to Afghanistan. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army or U.S. government.)

As a young man I worked for Artcraft Mobile Homes, where I met Jay Quayle, a devout Baptist.  Jay and I often discussed the differences of my Catholic faith and his.  Though I attend Catholic school for 8 years, I admit that Jay was better versed in biblical scripture than me.  Though we had different religious beliefs and I later left Artcraft, Jay and I remained close friends for years.

One Friday after we got paid at Artcraft I jokingly asked Jay, “Jay, are you going to get a 6-pack of beer after you cash your check?”  “No James,” Jay replied, “First thing I’ll do is go home, get 10% of my earnings and put it in my church envelope, then I’ll buy a 6-pack,” Jay concluded.  The following week, I asked Jay, why he gave his church 10% of his earnings.  Jay explained that God gave him so much that he felt obligated to give Him back 10% as scripture states.  Jay then asked me if I tithe.  Ashamed, I told him that I didn’t.  Folks, I, like so many other Catholics was unaware of tithing.  Though I made a good wage, I remember that I would put $2 in the offering plate and thought I was a high Catholic roller.  After Jay quoted me this scripture:  Luke 6:38: “Give, and it will be given to you.  A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.  For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you,” I began to tithe.  When I thanked Jay for teaching me about tithing he assured me that God would reward me 100 times over.

Employed at Artcraft and now tithing I landed a part time job as a linotype operator in the evenings.  A printing trade I studied in high school and wanted for years to get into.  Though I made a good salary at Artcraft, the added money I earned as a part time typesetter helped my family and me a lot.  After I honed my typesetting skills, Motheral Printing Co., a large firm, hired me.  Soon, I was made supervisor of the typesetting department, and, I continued working for several typesetting firms in the evenings.  Making good money I began to buy CDs at my bank.  As my weekly salary increased I to increased my weekly offering to my church.

One day, while talking to Carl Motheral, the company owner, a multi-millionaire, and a dear friend, encouraged me to join the company’s profit sharing plan.  I told Carl that I already had several CDs worth several thousand dollars and didn’t see any need for his profit sharing plan.  He replied, “James, CDs are Certificates of Depreciation.  Join our profit sharing plan and I’ll guarantee you will make more money on your investment that with CDs.”  Hesitantly, I took Carl’s advice.  A few years later, General Dynamics offered me a job as an Engineer Illustrator.  When I left Motheral Co. I was shocked at the amount of money I made on my profit sharing account.  I recall Carl Motheral telling me to roll over my investments otherwise Uncle Sam would get a large portion of it.

In the early 70s, my pastor and friend, Father Robert Alvarado, who knew I played guitar asked me and Dan Gonzales, a former choir member, if we could form a choir for the 9:00 a.m. Children’s Mass at All Saints Catholic Church.  Dan, who played the piano a little and read music, asked me to join him, which I did, and so together we started the laborious task of forming a choir with children.  As the years went by the choir and several boys who played the guitar with me got extremely good and popular in the parish.  Soon, our choir was asked to sing at all types of mass celebrations at All Saints.  When Dan and I taught the kids to sing love ballads in Spanish and in English the choir’s popularity grew immensely.  Almost weekly the choir was hired to sing at weddings, 25^th and 50^th anniversary masses and funerals throughout the diocese.  In 1980, my dear friend, and choir director, died of a massive heart attack at the age of 48.  Devastated, I continued for a few years directing the choir until the boys, by then young men, who played guitar asked me if we could form a music trio.  After forming the trio, we started playing at Los Vaqueros, a Mexican eatery in the Stockyards.  Our popularity grew so much that we were then asked to sing 5 nights a week.  Soon, I, along with my young players started making good money with our music.  Though I never charged All Saints a dime for my services, I suddenly recalled one night after paying my musicians the words of my dear friend, Jay Quayle, “Give to the Lord James, and He will pay you 100 times over.”  My friends, this year marks the 28^th year I’ve been performing and making money with my guitar, need I say more?

As I reflect on how I’ve done well for my family and myself, I thank God for giving me common sense, to try to be the best at what I do, and to be a hard worker.  With those ingredients that I’ve been blessed with, I’ve been able to help others in my life, including my church, charitable organizations, etc.  It is well stated in the Bible to help those less fortunate than you and Lord knows I try to.  But, look around you today in our country.  Why are there so many supposedly poor people in need?  Don’t all Americans have access to a high school education, which is all that I got.  Isn’t our country the land of opportunity and not guarantees?  Or, are too many Americans dependent on government handouts, which in essence keep them in the poor house?  In my view, the only ones that deserve to be cared for by our government are: the mentally sick, the elderly, the permanently impaired, abused children and women, and disabled veterans.  All others who are young and able-bodied — go get a job, any job!

Here are a couple, though there are many scripture readings pertaining to sluggards (lazy people):  Jesus in the parable of the talents in Mt. 25:26 has the Master in the story pronouncing judgment on the slave that is described as “lazy and wicked.”  He is described that way because he refused to invest what the Master gave in order to make a profit.  Paul in II Thess. 3:9 gives this exhortation, “For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either.”

The news that the Environmental Protection Agency prevented early clean-up of floating oil in the Gulf by refusing to waive its “clean water” limit of 15 parts per million should make us all focus on the job killing structure in Washington, D.C. Just three days after the BP spill, the Dutch government offered their oil-skimming ships and ocean oil-cleansing technology, but were rejected because the cleaned ocean water would not reach the EPA’s limits of being 99.9985 percent pure. Imagine if even half the oil had been skimmed off; the rest probably would not have even reached shore because oil degrades quickly in warm ocean water. But because oil did reach the shore, Washington ordered a moratorium on all deep water drilling over 500 feet in the Gulf, and a moratorium on all offshore drilling in Alaska and off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In Louisiana, the order is causing an estimated loss of tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of oil production over the next two years. Blue-collar jobs on Gulf oil rigs earn an average of $60,000 per year.

An economic crisis with high unemployment is the best time to confront and even possibly reform Washington’s job-killing laws. Most Americans are either uninformed about the quantity and consequences of these laws or they regard them as normal. So now is the time to recognize, enumerate, and challenge the worst of them. But to reform bad laws, first you need to get them debated in public.

All too often we hear that cheap Chinese labor is wrecking havoc with our industries. In reality, it is a host of costly, job-killing burdens from Washington that are responsible. How many investments and job creations are not made because of compliance costs associated with excessively strict regulations (and the lawsuits they generate)? It’s no wonder that our great achievements nowadays are in fields such as electronics, movies, and games, where entrepreneurs and innovators face less government obstructions, lawsuits, and labor costs. Compare this to an investor trying to build new factories or mines.

For example, in a remote area of Alaska, efforts to start up one of the world’s richest copper and gold mines is stymied by unending Kafkaesque regulations and lawsuits. In Utah, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar arbitrarily cancelled 77 previously issued oil/gas leases because the smell produced by the drilling might affect air quality in the desert near national parks. New mining ventures today have mostly moved to Canada to avoid such unnecessary hassles.

Another prime example is nuclear electric power, which could be cheap and abundant. China is building 60 new nuclear plants over the next 10 years, while in Washington it takes 10 years to build even a single plant. Both the Chinese and the French build them in a bit over 3 years. President Barack Obama said he favored such plants and proposed billions of dollars in subsidies, but he made no mention of the obstructive permitting process that makes nuclear power so uneconomical. Remember also that nuclear energy plants are an established technology. Why does each plant have to go through such a bureaucratic rigmarole?

The EPA’s extremism and vicious fines and penalties are a primary reason why America is falling behind much of the world. Yet we hear complaints from the usual suspects that the only jobs America produces are service ones. The consequence of that view is growing trade protectionism, since we blame foreigners for “unfair” competition. This causes even more job losses: Witness the inability of Congress to ratify new trade agreements with Korea and Colombia.

Government created jobs appear to cost an average $200,000 each according to various studies. Many are for non-economic, artificially-created jobs such as those in alternative energy, which is extraordinarily expensive. Washington does all that it can to obfuscate the costs of its subsidies and tax favors.

Fortunately we still have breakthroughs, such as with the new discovery of horizontal oil drilling and rock fracturing. America has such dynamism that economic growth still occurs despite the government’s many efforts to hinder it.  

Herewith is a list of immediate ways to create more jobs.

• Review EPA limits to identify and modify excessive and job-destroying regulations. As the oil cleansing limits discussed above indicate, many EPA restrictions are not based on realistic threats, but rather seem based upon the limits of its measuring abilities. They are often irrational and punitive and do nothing to secure health, safety, or prosperity.

• Revise depreciation schedules. American real estate companies, for example, must depreciate new roofs or new boilers over 27 years. Lowering that rate to 5 years would instigate enormous new activity for the building trades, providing tens or hundreds of thousands of sold blue-collar jobs.

• Reform the public sector. Billions in state funds could be directed towards hiring and construction if the money wasn’t committed to exorbitant pension and health benefit packages for public sector workers. Possible solutions include court challenges, firings, sub-contracting, and laws preventing public sector unions from going on strike. Louisiana and New Jersey are leading the way.

• Stop fighting endless foreign wars. Just think if the trillion dollars spent on Iraq had been used to rebuild our infrastructure. China, for example, is using its money to build massive new highways and high-speed rail between every major city. Meanwhile, it costs us 250,000 bullets for each dead guerrilla, half a million dollars to place each soldier (and his back-up) overseas, and $45 per gallon of fuel landed in Afghanistan. Little of this spending creates jobs in America.

• Stop passing vague laws. The new bank reform act, for instance, is expected to make small business loans harder to get and put new burdens on small banks. Among other restrictions, it requires bankers to verify that a loan is “suitable” for a given customer. That sort of vague language will inspire lawsuits, which in turn will result in the banks denying future loans.

• Make cheap electricity accessible. Government regulations (and regulation-inspired lawsuits) now prohibit or delay the building of new coal-generated plants as well as nuclear plants. Freeing up access to this cheap electricity would allow firms to prosper and hire more workers.

• Lift the ban on deep water offshore drilling. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of blue-collar jobs are in peril—or are simply not initiated—because of investors’ fears of arbitrary government regulations. Real estate magnate Steve Wynn relates his dealings with Washington here.

• Reform health care by promoting price competition and curtailing spurious lawsuits. Wasteful and expensive health care is a tremendous burden on American business, pushing up labor costs beyond the rates of even Western Europe, where withholding taxes include health insurance. It used to cost General Motors 8,000 dollars per worker for health insurance, compared to $800 in Canada. Reforms, blocked in many states, include Minute Clinics and Wal-Mart’s similar program where skilled nurses—backed-up by databases and by doctors on call—see patients for about $69 and dispense $4 generic medicines. This cuts out the money wasted on unnecessary tests and operations. These simple reforms would promote competition and save billions in health insurance costs.

• Stop subsidizing Ethanol, solar, and wind power. The billions wasted here could be used for real investments to expand America’s economy and re-build our decaying infrastructure.

The above are just a few ways in which millions of new jobs could be created. Sparking debate on these issues is the way to create real jobs, reduce government deficits, and bring prosperity back to America.

Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative. He was a foreign correspondent for Knight Ridder newspapers and former associate editor of The Times of the Americas. For 17 years, he was a commentator for the Voice of America. In the 1980s, he owned and operated a small oil drilling partnership in Pennsylvania.