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Okay, as promised, some more detail on this afternoon's "Iraq in 2020" panel at the Middle East Institute conference. The whole concept was something of a conceit -- as a reader pointed out, there's a lot of uncertainty about Iraq in 2010 -- so most of the panel focused on shorter-term concerns.

I complained earlier about the lack of focus on economics. The panel mostly focused on politics and diplomacy -- how Iraqis will reconcile internally, and how they'll relate to their neighbors (and the U.S.) externally. What really struck me was the divergence between the American panelists, who tended to be more optimistic about the future, and the Iraqi panelists, who seemed pessimistic about intractable problems of Iraqi governance.

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon at the Middle East Institute conference. MEI was holding a panel discussion on "Iraq in 2020," in which four panelists made wild guesses about how Iraq will look a decade from now.

I'll have a fuller write-up on the panel tonight. But for now, a quick observation: There was almost no discussion of Iraq's economy. It came up two or three times in the 90-minute discussion -- and the discussion always focused on Iraq's oil industry. There was no discussion of rebuilding Iraq's shattered manufacturing sector, or addressing problems in the agricultural sector, or trying to reverse decades of "brain drain."

Political reconciliation and security are important. But they won't do Iraq much good if they're not coupled with economic development. It's worth remembering that Iraq's per capita income today -- roughly $1,000 -- is one-third what it was three decades ago.