Tragedy of Incentives

One of the Daily Dish's guest authors raises the issue here of America's delusional assumption that Iraq's care about the whole. Part of this may hark back to the negative connotations people have concerning incentives. I am referring to something along the lines of: "Altruism is what good people do, bad people need incentives to achieve the same results". As an example, in high school the founders of the US were never discussed as having benefited from the break from England, but they went from being the second class (below the ruling British) to being the elite as a result. They also got to shape the future of a nation and become one of the few models for democracy the world has ever known. How cool is that?

We should be asking questions like "Does the ruling party in Iraq feel like a stable Iraq is there only option? If not, how do we incentivize them to create a stable Iraq?". But if we are trapped in the 'good people are altruistic' mode, we can't ask those kinds of questions and hope to find an answer.