a)Looting government buildings IS bad. Any new administration WILL need the equipment to coordinate the country. Every stolen computer, every stolen file, will make the task of keeping the country together harder.
b)They aren’t looting just government buildings and stores. They’re looting hospitals that are overcrowded and understocked already, and they’re doing it so violently that doctors who went through all the bombings are now scared to go to work. This looting is KILLING people.
c)This isn’t the poor trying to make a better living off the regime that made them poor. People have been breaking in storefronts with trucks and hauling off everything inside on the truck. This isn’t just meeting one’s needs.
d)To illustrate the above, they’ve been looting the university in Basra, up to and including copies of master theses and dissertations. Hardly something of use for the layperson other than to make fire with it, but seriously bad for an academic infrastructure for a new Iraq.
Without wanting to invoke a slippery slope fallacy, I feel that there is a danger of the looting(of government buildings) spilling over into a sort of general lawlessness and this resulting in financial loss for completely innocent Iraqi businesses and people.
This seems to indicate that some of the looting is endemic. (offered as a datapoint more than anything else). Interesting comments on the heavily armed local population though.
Considering all that the Iraqi people have been through, looting is understandable, but at some point it needs to stop. And at this stage, they are no longer stealing from the old regime. Much of that stuff needs to be replaced, so it’s just going to be another thing the American’s and others are going to have to be writing extra checks for. We have enough to pay for already.
I totally agree that at some point there should be some effort made to restore law and order everywhere in Iraq. But you have to take into consideration that the coalition forces there are trained and mandated to shoot to kill any enemy they find. Looters are criminals yes but not deserving of an instant military death penalty. It is not the jobs of soldiers to police cities and act as cops.
As a side note, why arent the good people of Iraq taking up arms and forming a protection force? They can band together and protect the hospitals and shops and residential community. They can coordinate with the coalition forces for recognition as friend not foe and be allowed to carry guns and observe protocols. Why is it the US coalitions responsibility to maintain order when they have every capability to maintain order themselves?
Maybe just “owning guns” is one small part of that equation, ALE. I doubt that any population in the same situation as in Basra has “every capability to maintain order.” The old regime isn’t even completely out of town yet, man.