There was in my estimation a time to make it right. First, I believe going there was a stupid idea and grounded in a pack of lies. But,once the ugly deed was done we had a clean chance.
If we had stopped the looting and saved the museums it would have made the Iraqis feel safer. Then if we would have fixed the electricity ,gas and water the people would have had to admire our interest in making their lives better. To this day the electricity is not turned on for significant periods. I bekieve it cpuld have been done if the desire was there. Bloggers from Iraq that I have read,are unanimous in the disghust for us not fixing the infrastructure. Summer in Baghdad without AC can be brutal. Remarks like they put a man on the moon but cant fix the electricity abound. None of them believe the will was there. If we had taken care of business we may have created allies ,at least people willing to wait and see. But for most of them the time is way past.
My expectation was that the first trucks into Basra/Baghdad after the shooting stopped would have been dumper trucks filled with MREs, candy and first aid kits, with GI’s flinging them over the side using snow shovels. Shortly followed by a lengthy convoy of 18-wheelers loaded down with air conditioners, water filters, lengths of plumbing, hand tools, and a few billion in small change - for the purpose of paying any able-bodied male $5 per day to help piece the country together. After all, surely EVERYONE had figured out that buying cooperation was cheaper than trying to coerce it? Guess not.
:smack:
I vividly remember watching the BBC reports from Basra - a TV squad had gotten into the warehouses where the UN food aid was stored and started off with clips like “the fighting is still ongoing in the city, but any moment now we expect to see coalition forces arriving to secure these crucial warehouses, which contain virtually all the food in the city and will be vital to the occupation. Shots of Our Boys Being Heroic real soon now”
A day or so later the reports were “well, for some reason the troops still haven’t shown up here, but now looters are beginning to plunder the food. Someone had better show up soon to guard all this stuff, otherwise the city will have no food and that’s going to make the coalition pretty unpopular”.
Another few days and the reporter was basically saying “Everything’s been picked bare by looters, still no troops here, what the hell are these idiots playing at?”.
:smack:
It was at that point I realised that someone somewhere in the chain of command was a total bloody numpty. It wasn’t long before I realised it was the people at the top.
Disbanding the army? WTF? It would have been better to give them all shovels, pay half of them to dig holes in the desert and the other half to fill them in, at $10 per day. Would certainly have been a damn sight cheaper than fighting them.
But they did do that sort of thing - maybe not literally the way you descibe, but certainly the U.S. has been pouring the aid in. Iraqis are human beings, not dogs; their loyalty cannot be bought with treats.
Look, the U.S. has killed what, 10,000 civilians? More? Let’s put ourselves in their position. What would YOU do if a foreign power invaded your country and killed your neighbours? Your best friend? What if they killed your aunt? Your mother? What if they killed your child? Could you then be bought off with MREs and water filters?
If a foreign power invaded my country and killed a member of my family I would swear an oath of eternal revenge that no amount of blood would ever repay.
I’m sure you know from real life experience that one bad deed outweighs a hundred good ones in the eye of most folks. Every time an Iraqi hears or reads about a raping, a murder, someone being tortured, an airstrike that kills a whole family, that’s going to harden their hearts against anything GOOD the Americans do. Invasion and occupation is not a friendly act and you ain’t gonna fool anyone otherwise.
w
I wonder if this would have worked…
What if after the first month of occupation we gave each Iraqi US$500? Tell them it is half of the money earned by the export of oil. Then we do that each month for a year. Sometimes the amount is less if the oil pipelines are attacked.
Then we leave. God help the Iraq politician who wanted to go back to the old way of doing things.
Not really. It has been pissing away billions on foreign contractors and allowing local VIPs to squirrel away fortunes. It has delivered very little in terms of additional income and quality of life to orderinary iraqis.
And loyalty can’t be bought - but make sure the bulk of the population benefit from the occupation, and they will be much more likely to tolerate it.
The trouble didn’t really start until it became obvious that the US:
[ul]
[li]Had no interest in maintaining law and order[/li][li]Were not going to deliver electricity, running water, medical care, or anything else for the population[/li][li]Threw hundreds of thousands of soldiers and Baathists out of work[/li][/ul]
Don’t you remember the footage of soldiers rioting after the army was disbanded, the fatal mob scenes outside coalition bases when there were roumors that labourers were being hired? They looked to be pretty keen on earning a days wage from the coalition back then.
Oh yeah - and one other classic :smack:. The coalition ‘liberators’ moving into Saddam’s palaces. Nice. Excellent message that sent out.
Then those billions in small change wouldn’t have made it into the pockets of American corporations, would they?
-Joe
Oh, I’m sure the U.S. has pissed a lot of money away on corruption and payback; I mean, it’s the government, of course they’ve wasted money. But yes, they have put a lot of effort into winning hearts and minds.
You cannot repay someone for killing their relatives by giving them stuff.
Oh, I agree this could have been handled better, especially the idiotic “De-Ba’athization” program dedicated to rooting out an ideology that doesn’t really exist anyway. But a resistance was inevitable all the same.
In one incident 9 billion came up missing. It was the innefficient government auditors that have found out the financial shinnanigans that the corporations are into. They are looting the money and not providing the services. Bechtel is finally getting rapped for their theft . There has been reports of unclean drinking water given to our troops. Many meals charged for that werent served. Vehicles left for loss with flat tires. We have not fixed the electric and water after 3 years. We have not made the streets safe or supplied jobs. Promised hospitals jhave not been provided long after promised yet the entire budget is gone. It is many things plus we went in as America the efficient can do country. They actually thought we would fix things up in a short time.
Exactly.
Ungrateful bunch of little bastards, aren’t they?
-Joe
Is this the thread you mean?
Its an interesting read…but pretty much everyone in it is wrong (no one predicted the insurgency would be such a nightmare for instance…many, even those who are firmly anti-Iraq today predicted something or other to do with WMD). Some are less wrong than others. I note a few predicted that US casualties in the occupation would exceed those during the invasion phase…and they were spot on.
Perhaps you meant another thread though as I don’t see that 'luci even posted to this one.
-XT
For the sake of being comprehensive, I might point out that some of them could be gullible idiots and shills.