Via Glenn, great news for Iraq’s future:
BAGHDAD — Iraq is poised to receive a flood of foreign investment, thanks to improved security. More than $74 billion in projects have been submitted for government approval in just the past five months, according to Iraq’s state investment regulator.
The investors include companies from the U.S., Europe, and Gulf Arab states. Their proposals all involve sectors other than oil, including a $13 billion new port for the southern city of Basra, several hotels and thousands of housing units nationwide, says Ahmed Ridha, the chairman of Iraq’s National Investment Commission.Â
This is a trend I’ve noted before. There are also benefits for rural Iraqis:
 The USAID officials we visited are working on an agricultural program to teach Iraqi farmers more efficient methods of working their land. They spend a lot of time outside Baghdad in the country.
“A year ago there was a sniper taking shots at us every time we left our base,” said Brian Conklin, a USAID official. “There were 385 attacks in our area every week. Today we can go anywhere in our 1,300 square miles of territory without a problem.”
Another official, Robert Dose, said the improved security situation had already allowed them to increase vegetable yields for Iraqi farmers in their area by 300 percent.
“We’ve been able to upgrade the infrastructure that allows farmers to get back into production,” he said.
 It’s heart-lifting to see a country getting on its feet after decades of violence and oppression.
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For some time now, the great strides forward made by the Clinton administration in the Balkans during the 1990s (widely criticized by the right at the time as being hopeless and pointless, I might add) were the greatest foreign policy triumph in American history since the fall of the Soviet Empire.
It increasingly appears that that accomplishment is about to be dwarfed by our success in Iraq. Knock on wood.
Both will also be living and undeniable proof that the whole "Islam is inherently incompatible with freedom and democracy” and “never trust a devout Muslim" chuckleheads are full of it. (And don’t anyone try to tell me such people don’t exist, I’ve run into more of them than I can count.)
Baghdad could become the financial capitol of the Muslim Middle East. They have the location, oil will provide the wherewithal, American bases in the western desert will provide the safety, and the culture is better for finance and business in general than Saudi Arabia’s.
I wish I owned some Baghdad real estate. My father was a staff sergeant in the Army in Japan after WWII, and he bought some land on the outskirts of Tokyo. That was a real good decision.
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