Turner and Harman are quite clear that "poverty does not make poor people into terrorists. Yet poverty, weak institutions and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks within their borders." The report expresses the belief, with which I wholly concur, that "the primary hope for heading off this potentially explosive situation is economic growth." To this end, we have been working with Hernando de Soto, among others, on a 21st century Marshall Plan for the Middle East and Central Asia for well over two years. De Soto, economist and property rights activist, recently received the prestigious Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty from the Cato Institute. It is my hope is that someday, he will receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his groundbreaking work on creating property rights, formalizing the informal economy and turning dead capital into live capital.
Turner and Harman contend that "education is the key to preventing a new generation from turning to teachings of the extremists." Thus, they call for a massive international effort to pledge a total of $10 billion over 10 years for an Arab Youth Opportunity Fund to be spent directly for operation of primary and secondary secular schools in the Arab states that commit to doubling their investment in public education over the course of 10 years. This approach of requiring matching performance and commitment by recipient nations is a page right out of President Bush's Millennium Challenge Accounts, which disgracefully still languishes in Congress.
I have recently been to Egypt with de Soto to continue our work together in promoting and facilitating a plan that would extend from Kabul to Baghdad. In conjunction with this project, we are bringing members of the Egyptian government together with bipartisan leadership of our Congress and the Bush White House this June. Our ideas, for the most part, coincide with the president's vision for a "Greater Middle East Initiative" as well as Turner's and Harman's ideas for a "Renaissance Partnership" proposal for the Middle East.
All of this has to be done with respect for the cultural integrity of the Middle East and in close consultation with regional leaders such as King Abdullah II of Jordan, Egyptian Finance Minister H.E. Medhat Hassanein, the Iraqi Governing Council and Afghani President Hamed Karzai.
Judging by the broad commonalities between our work, the president's proposals and the Turner-Harman study, it appears there is an opportunity to seize on a bipartisan, multilateral consensus around what must be done in Iraq and the Middle East going forward. Hopefully, we can move forward on a bipartisan basis and pass legislation in Congress, such as the Millennium Challenge Accounts among other laudable initiatives, further enabling the administration to advance a strategic, multifaceted foreign policy throughout Central Asia and the Middle East.