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From the Horses’ Mouths (so to speak)

Joshua Foust on Apr 24 2008 at 2:58 pm | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Notes on the war

Whatever could this guy be going on about?

“Saddam had his big castles; they symbolized his power and were places to be feared, and now we have the castle of the power that toppled him,” says Abdul Jabbar Ahmed, a vice dean for political sciences at Baghdad University. “If I am the ambassador of the USA here I would say, ‘Build something smaller that doesn’t stand out so much, it’s too important that we avoid these negative impressions.’ “

Why, he’s one of many Iraqis in Baghdad who are furious at the monstrous U.S. Embassy that will open for occupancy next month. It will cost approximately $1 billion per year to operate, in part because it will be self-sufficient, completely disconnected with the rest of Baghdad and Iraq. And it was built by slave labor.

On the brighter side, however, it was only $250 million over budget, which makes it among the most economic decisions made during this war. For context, the new American Embassy in Beijing, which is needless extravagance of the first kind, costs less—an entire embassy complex—than this one embassy’s budget overflow. And the operating costs aren’t even in the same league.

It’s like a huge unfunny joke, only it’s not.

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6 Responses to “From the Horses’ Mouths (so to speak)”

  1. on 24 Apr 2008 at 4:25 pm 1MichaelW

    You might want to correct your “slave labor” quip. It’s a bunch of malarkey:

    Mayberry [the guy who made the slave labor allegation] worked for First Kuwaiti for five days in 2006, until the company fired him, it says, for failure to prove he had proper qualifications. In his July testimony, he described being on a plane en route to Baghdad in 2006 when 51 Filipinos broke out in panic when they heard they were going to work in Baghdad instead of Dubai. A Philippines government inquiry last month found that only 11 workers were on the flight and that all of them knew there were going to Iraq.

     

  2. on 25 Apr 2008 at 6:42 am 2Keith_Indy

    Even so, the Iraq Embassy is a bit overblown.

  3. on 25 Apr 2008 at 7:12 am 3MichaelW

    Agreed.  It’s a monstrosity.

  4. on 25 Apr 2008 at 8:18 am 4ChrisB

    Just to look at the other side of it, don’t we always talk about needing to engage not just the military, but the state dept in the rebuilding too? Is this huge Embassy a step toward a large state dept effort to engage?

     

    I don’t know, and even if so, maybe this monstrous embassy isn’t the way to do it, but that’s just the devil’s advocation I came up with.

  5. on 25 Apr 2008 at 11:25 am 5Keith_Indy

    Except all indications are that they can’t even fill the positions they have now, let alone when this opens up.

  6. on 25 Apr 2008 at 6:42 pm 6Frank_A

    For anyone who tries to argue that the US is not or is trying to create an empire (myself included), THAT…this surely brings out the pain and tears.

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