So What Now?

“I chased the car all the way down the street and I caught it.  I’ve got no thumbs, so I can’t steer.  I haven’t got feet that reach the pedals.  My tail gets in the way, I can’t click off the parking brake, or turn the keys.  There’s nothing to eat in here.  It smells like human asses in the front seats and a dog bum in the back seat.  I can’t open the hood, I can’t tune the radio, I can’t get in the trunk and when I try to adjust the mirror, all I see is the headliner.  Shit, I can’t even open the goddam sunroof.  What the hell was I thinking?”

Which sums up, from a dog’s perspective, what happens when you chase a car and then catch it.  It is exactly where the US and UK are now regarding Iraq. 

The looting and general anarchy is to be expected for another day or two.  So are the suicide bombers.  The US troops had best learn from the Brits and Israelis on how to run a checkpoint.  The Brits learned in Northern Ireland and the Israelis since Day 1 that checkpoints are now targets, as they offer soldiers staying in one place, not moving around, as great chances to do some damage politically and physically.

Looting is just the population’s way of saying “bite me” to the old regime by stealing all their stuff.  The issue is the return to control.  Cities work because of city workers picking up the garbage, keeping the generators running, the water pumping, firemen putting out fires, hospitals patching up the injured, supermarkets selling bread, dry cleaners cleaning, auto repair places, all the little shops and services that make an infrastructure and an economy.  Until the population feels safe enough to return to work, there will be no work and no working city or economy. 

This was driven home in Somalia when the entire state imploded.  Anyone having any prosperity at all was considered an enemy and would be persecuted by those who had nothing but an empty belly and a gun.  Black markets in food, water, medicine and other basics grew overnight, the coin being salvage materials. 

Mogadishu was essentially stripped of all copper plumbing piping as you could sell the copper for a few coins to buy bread.  All the telephone and electrical cables were pulled up or off the poles, for the metal, for black market food or medicine. 

Therefore, even if you could restore public services, there was no way to get the services, like water, sewer, electrical or phone, to anyone, because the delivery mechanism was missing.  Therefore, as an employee of these organizations, there is no work, no pay and no job.  In order to feed the family, I must now steal stuff to sell to the black market.  It is a big circle.

Post-WWII, the Marshall Plan in Germany put just about everyone to work, rebuilding the economy, clearing the rubble, patching the roads, putting in sewers, hanging the electrical grid and so on.  The same thing was done in postwar Japan.  People were paid, at first by the Allies, then by contractors, to do the work.  It jumpstarts the economy and patches up the infrastructure that has to be there to make the country function. 

We’re not talking political infrastructure either:  Politics are not needed.  A working village, city, town or suburb is.  You should be able to turn a tap and get water or plug in a lamp and get light.  Someone on the block, or a short walk away, should be making bread, or selling vegetables. 

Today, those Iraqi soldiers marching home from the north, should be offered food, water, shelter and some money, in exchange for some manual labour clearing bombed buildings, or filling in trenches.  Think simple, like the Depression, the AlCan Highway, or the Tennessee Valley Authority.  Simple work, some pay, some food.

Offer a weeks’ work.  Some of them might even stay longer, but you get three benefits.  One, you get the holes in the street filled in, or the electrical grid back up.  Two, you make it hard for rebel groups to pop up, promising food for your family in exchange for a suicide bomb run.  Three, you can go through those workers, issuing new IDs, checking for war criminals while finding the individuals who are willing to work to rebuild the country. 

There’s no politics in this.  I would argue that politics should be purposely ignored for the next month or so.  Fix the cities, towns and villages first.  Then start worrying about who is left or right, or effective, or influential, or represents some ‘important’ group.

Screw that noise until you can get the lights back on.