Well, other than gtf out and let it all go straight to Hell, I’ve got nothing in the way of alternatives to “stay the course”, which, we all know, isn’t working out so well.
What a horrendous mess.
Well, I don’t really either to be honest. Oh, I can think of some things that MIGHT work…problem is, I can’t think of anything Bush would DO that might work. Also, many of my own thoughts I don’t see how we could get OTHER countries on board at this point either.
You are right though…what a fucking ‘horrendous mess’. I think we are just going to have to grimly go through the motions, seeing things increasingly spin out of control and watch the wheels fall off until Bush et al is gone…and hope to the gods that the next bozo we get can do something different, and doesn’t just cut and run leaving the Iraqi’s to hold the bag.
I’m not optimistic about any of those possibilities myself mind you.
-XT
Put some sort of onstar tracking system on every car in the country…and put one on every car entering the country…put cameras on every telephone pole, streetlight, corners of tall buildings and track what everyone electronically. Put ecstasy in the water supply and pipe in new age music. Make “wake and bake” an everyday custom.
How horrifying is it, actually, within the context of what we’re already doing and have done in Iraq. Blowing people up, killing and torturing them? Seems semi-horrifying at best. Just make it the cost of carrying arms legally that the government knows where you are at all times. Seems reasonable to me, a non-violen t way to address the problem. And your bald assertion that it wouldn’t work doesn’t really constitute an argument.
You may be right … the death squads may be trained and supported by us, as this MSNBC article points out. I still think they’re a problem though. I mean, El Salvador didn’t exactly lead a legacy of pride for the US.
Judges lawyers and witnesses are being killed in Iraq. Ship 'em elsewhere for trial and it’ll be much harder to kill them. Use Muslim legal staff to keep things Iraqi. Though I suppose the locals might be able to get tested on Iraqi law. I just think seeing Iraqis tried by blonde judges and lawyers would sit wrong with Iraqis.
Undercutting the existing government might be a problem … don’t know. Do you think the Iraqi populace respects it at all, without American might backing it? I suspect the present govt. wouldn’t last 15 minutes without US support. And I chose Iceland because it’s a remote island where anyone who looks like an Iraqi would be … easily detectable.
Yes, I agree, this would be extremely unpopular with Iraqis. Frankly, the fact that they don’t want to let their women out loose means women wouldn’t have much of a problem, so long as they stayed indoors. I doubt the men would care for it either. But it does make it harder to smuggle weapons and bombs and stuff around under your clothes, making suicide bombings much more difficult. I’d be glad to entertain a solution that would be more popular among Muslims. That would actually work. Haven’t seen a lot of that lately … have you?
This is a long-term solution and would probably take time. But if you accept my thesis that sexual frustration and the resulting anger fuels much of the Middle Eastern tendency toward violence, then it’s very evident that makingsexual release more common would help reduce that violence.
No, you’re wrong about the nature of thinking outside the box. Even if the specific solution you come up with wont’ work, it might give you a new perspective on the problem that lets you come up with a solution that DOES work. It’s a very common way of solving seemingly intractable problems.
I’m more concerned with not getting people killed. Sacrilegious and all, but there it is.
Iraq is a very hot country. I don’t think anybody’s gonna survive a trip to the market in a rubber latex suit. Maybe a thinner fabric that breathes well and is skintight, but I don’t know of any. I suggested near-nudity because it’s cooling.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned sunburn. I was prepared to respond with large supplies of free sunblocker for Iraqis.
I am amenable to other suggestions. If you have anything other than nothing, to quote our Fearless Misleader, “bring it on.”
I agree that trying to undo the damage created by the Brits when they spot-welded the country of Iraq is a good idea. Partition has its advantages, but as you say, many folks will have to move out of the areas they now live in. You can see how well the Palestinians took to that when Israel tried it on them. Is there any way we could manage it without creating a new class of displaced Arabs?
Yeah, those things are a LOT worse than bombing, torture and death squads! What was I thinking?
I hope you are right, and all that wil lbe necessary will be a demonstration of a democracy doing things right. It seems to neat a solution to me, too much of a wish-fulfillment approach, like the notion that the Iraqis would greet us as liberators entertained by the Bush Admin. prior to the war. I would REALLY like for things to work out as you suggest, but for that very reason, I’m suspicious of its prospects.
Well, we get along very well with the Kurds, as I understand it. And we want bases in the region. And as I understand it, Kurdish land sits on a lot of that oil we like so much. Seems like we could work out a deal with the Kurds. We say to them, 'Let us build a couple of bases on your land, keep an armored divisiion or two there and build some airstrips where we’ll keep a squadron or three of attack aircraft, and we’ll put the word out that if anyone is thinking of invading your turf to get that oil you seem to have too much of, or for any other reason, they’ll get to play “hide the army” with our tanks and aircraft while you guys hide out in the ravines and wipe out any ground troops that stray out of our kill zones."
I think that would be a deterrent.
Now, Turkey does have a very big problem with Kurdish terrorists inside their country, but we could go to them and say, “we’re gonna work with the Kurds over here, and see if we cant’ help you out with that terrorism problem.” The Turks might go for it.
Win win win.
Its pretty fucking horrifying. To be honest, I’d rather live with blowing people up, torture and killing than the kind of totalitarian state you are proposing. Maybe the Iraqi people would look at it differently, but I seriously doubt it.
You have no concept of what something like this would cost. It could run into trillions if you are serious about making the thing actually work the way you are envisioning it. Even if you could somehow get a unit price (for just the collars…gods, the vision of that makes me shudder) of, say, $500 per collar (and that has got to be overly optimistic for what you are asking), there are something like 28 million Iraqi’s. My back of the envelope calculation puts the price of that at roughly $1.45 trillion dollars. Thats just for the COLLARS. You’d also need some kind of wireless system, unless you are going to rely on the collars collecting all data and storing them onboard, the security software, testing, deployment…oh, lets say that all costs no more than an additional $500 billion (I’m being generous here)…whats a few more billion, ehe?
As to my bald assertion meaning nothing, you are right. I AM a network engineer, but no one has ever contemplated something like what you are talking about here on such a scale, so anyone would be making assumptions and basically talking out of their ass without solid requirements. YOUR bald assertion that its possible however means even less than mine however. Unless you would like to tell me your credentials for security, wireless infrastructure, software/hardware design, or anything else that might be related to your proposal. 
Tell me true…this whole thread is a sham, just a forum for you to bash on the US…isn’t it?
I’d say that this sitting wrong with the Iraqi’s would be the least of your problems. Of all the things you propose to foist on them via fiat, I’d say they would have the least objection to this. Of course, ‘least objection’ is a relative term when considering collars and public nudity in a muslim state. But hey…its something.
Do the Iraqi’s respect the current government? I’d say some do and some don’t. Would the current govenment last 15 minutes if the US cut and ran? Probably not. But if you push that government over the brink, I’d say you’d have an all out civil war in Iraq. If you think things are bad now, think through what it will be like when you have all the stuff you have now, but pushed up about an order of magnitude in violence…with some set piece battles between organized military and paramilitary groups thrown in for laughs. And perhaps other regional nations joining in the fun.
I think ‘extremely unpopular with Iraqis’ is a vast understatement on the effect of your program on them. In the US, forcing through such a plan would be ‘extremely unpopular’…in Iraq (and the greater ME at large) there would quite literally be an explosion. I really don’t think you are getting the magnitude of how bad it would be…because you think the US is a fanatical fundamentalist state, and IMHO this colors your perceptions. I’m not busting on you here, but seriously, the explosion in the ME of trying to force the population there to wear thongs at all time would not be comparable to what would happen here in the US…or in Europe for that matter. Here people would bitch, complain, protest in the street…there, blood would run in the streets, and the violence would make the current problems you are attempting to fix look like a picnic. I’m not exaggerating here.
I think a combination of poverty, religious repression and perhaps sexual repression all are factors in the root causes of the problems there. To that extent I’m willing to agree with you. I don’t believe you could fix these problems by fiat in the manner you suggest. I DO think that the solution lies in the long term though…and I think that the seeds of that solution are already planted and growing. I look at Iran and I think the recent crack downs indicate that those in power ALSO see the seeds growing and are trying to stamp them out. But to paraphrase the Princess in Star Wars, the tighter you close your hands the more folks will slip through your fingers.
Its not that your solutions can’t work (they obviously can’t), its that they show a lack of understanding of the underlieing problems. Its the mallot approach to solving problems…and the same general problem with Bush, who tried to do things in the same way. Sure, think outside the box, be wild and crazy…but you first need to really understand enough so that your solutions aren’t completely impossible AND irrational (rationality being defined by your target audience, not some absolute).
-XT
Evil Captor, with all due respect, if you were serious with that list, you’re not just out of the box, you’re out of your mind.
You stated:
Okay, then your entire list qualifies.
Actually, in all honesty, I don’t think your first item is all that bad of an idea. Several countries track the whereabouts of their officers via their car’s computer system. Going one step further and tracking the officer due to the very reasons you listed is not outlandish (again, considering the situation).
Sorry, I can’t resist. Cite? 
Offhand, without any more knowledge of Iraqi language and culture than our troops have, why would installing cops help? Wouldn’t they be just another brand of occupier? One of the reasons cops work in the US is that most of us accept their legitimacy as objective enforcers of the law (most of the time – Og knows there are exceptions). I don’t see the Iraqis seeing cops who can’t speak the language and don’t know the cultures as such.
Good idea. How about just having them patrol the oil fields and oil lines against sabotage? Of course, some of them will probably be saboteurs. But there are probably ways of dealing with that issue, unless things have gone completely to hell there and everybody hates us. Which may well be the case.
Well, it’s past my bedtime kiddies, but I am very pleased with the responses here. I do want to challenge the notion that my proposals have to be good to be productive. Thinking outside the box is also called “lateral thinking.” One of the basic concepts of lateral thinking is “Po” or “provocative operation,” defined in the Wikipedia entry on lateral thinking as:
Or, sometimes not only is the perfect the enemy of the good, but the bad is the friend of the good. An ugly truth, I know.
Just don’t go away saying I was po-mouthing here.
How 'bout we just depose Bush, dissolve the Iraqi government, reinstate a formal occupation, and make Bush the new Administrator of Iraq.
Why don’t we let the Iraqis democratically vote for continued coalition presence?
I still like my plan. Give every Iraq a monthly cash payout for oil royalties.
it is crazy but it just might work.
What are we trying to do here? What are our goals, and what are our constraints? I assume, based on the suggestions already offered, that civil liberties are not a restraint on our actions.
Let us assume that our endgame is an Iraq filled with people that, if not in love with the U.S., at least do not hate it, and are willing to get along in peace with their neighbors.
Well, let’s go the sci-fi route: mandatory sterilization for all Iraqis, all immigration is illegal (punishable by sterilization and other crimes), and so forth. Then, only allow Iraqis to breed under controlled circumstances, take the kids away, and leave them in government-sponsored education camps until they are 25 or so. Ruthlessly pound home in said camps that the U.S. is good, that Israel is good, that terrorism is bad, and so on. Cull any children who don’t seem to be measuring up. As the Iraqi population is beginning to feel the effects of their youngest members of society being about 40 to 50, we can release our camp-children into the population at large. We’ll also be ready to stand by with massive punitive military measures against any acts of violence against our new Iraqis, further reducing the non-camp Iraqi population. Eventually (within a human lifespan of the sterilization), all Iraqis not forcibly indoctrinated into the glory of the U.S. and the importance of living in a civil society and reporting any suspicious behavior of your neighbors to the authorities, we’ll have a new Iraq.
Since in this scenario, we don’t give a damn about defending the Iraqis from sectarian violence (just sterilizing them and killing them in large numbers when they protest), we will be able to save money relative to a normal occupation, which we will need to fund the camps.
Also, this assumes that we can both instill and test for the behaviors we wish to induce in our new Iraqi citizens.
Any other ideas?
A majority of those three are being done by Iraqis and terrorists and not the US government. And none, as far as I know, are policies of the government.
Our government, and the government of the Iraqis, should lead by example. Decreasing unemployment, rebuilding the infrastructure, adding more freedoms not less, iliminating corruption (which is, I think, the major unspoken problem in Iraq), and offering hope. What you are suggesting appears to be simply a return to Iraq under Saddam, where there is less bombing, torture, murder, and more security, but with limited freedom and no democracy. Freedom and democracy come at a severe price, especially when forced upon a country that is not ready for it. It’s something the brain dead idiots in this administration ignored and now the Iraqis are paying the price for our idiot’s mistakes. But totalitarianism, even by a “benevolent” government, is not the solution.
Hey, if you really want to think outside the box in the Middle East, simply abolish (or cease to recognize) all national borders. They were just drawn up by colonials, anyway, with little regard for the ethnic groupings. Let new lines be drawn, some border skirmishes fought and when the dust settles ten years from now, there might be something resembling a workable new set of modern nation-states in the area.
Meantime, push for more nuclear power in the U.S. and hybrid cars and such.