posted
We are floundering around in Iraq for a couple of very significant reasons.
One of which is not the failure of our military campaign.
One is that the Government is corrupt, greedy and compromised.
The other is that the people are poor, desperate and still waiting on the fence to "see who comes out on top"
These two facts make the mastery we hold on the field of battle useless until we either start herding people by brute force or find a better way to deal with them.
Here is a solution that is not new, it is just not being implemented "at this time" and it comes down to a two step plan that I feel we need to get behind on grassroots level and begin to push on our politicos.
First step, dump oil revenues into a fund for the Iraqi people, not their representatives who then waste it on giving cousin Abdul his own highway department to fill out with all his family members.
Yes Iraq is foundering in a sea of problems, from bad water to corrupt cops, poor infrastructure and intermittent power, but frankly the government cannot be trusted to address the issues in an honest fashion so we gut the government budget to a skeletal maintenance allowance and then go to phase two.
Issue ID/Debit cards to every Iraqi who gives an address, takes a picture and leaves his or her fingerprint. Require it as a voting registration card, require it as a drivers license and let it access, (by my calculations) about four hundred and fifty dollars a month for every man and woman above a certain age.
So what happens then? First of all the cost of buying loyalty goes way up. Rich Saudis will not be able to recruit for a few million dollars anymore. Second all that money is going to start chasing goods and services driving up prices and starting a housing and economic explosion. Third the money multiplier will turn those billions into hundreds of billions in economic value that can be taxed to build a real government. Fourth the people will begin to have economic power to match the vote they posses and they will be more independent of the political and economic manipulation of rich sheiks and mullahs. Fifth we find out where and who everyone is.
We have seen that Iraq's who crave power and seek public position do so out of greed and worse, it is time to give the power to the common folk and see what they will vote for with their dinars.
Give them the money, we should be clamoring to see this solution in play, if you believe in the decency of the common Iraqi, and if you believe in the people having the power, and if you distrust government as a matter of principle, lets let the people have the power. Then the Iraqi government can begin to provide what services the people can't or won't seek.
Hey maybe the best solution to power problems is not a big infrastructure, maybe it is a hundred thousand Honda generators... maybe the best solution to the water problem is local not national. Lets do this, lets solve the logistics and do it.
Posts: 475 | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:First step, dump oil revenues into a fund for the Iraqi people, not their representatives who then waste it on giving cousin Abdul his own highway department to fill out with all his family members.
See, I'm living in Chicago, where as it turns out, if you have enough cousins, this mirrors the effects of good government.
I feel chicken little. During the run up, people were saying that Iraq would go the way of Germany and Japan, and all I could think of was that it sounds more like the American South.
General Sax, I think that writing the people a blank check would only work if they were all on arable land, sort of that, I think you'd need a large, functioning, diverse business and social infrastructure, which isn't set-up and is almost impossible to cook-up without rampant corruption.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Hang on, hang on - if you give everyone $450 each month, who's going to do the work? It seems to me that you risk creating one hell of an inflation this way. Are you going to start importing absolutely everything, down to and including chickens?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
If we are very lucky the prospect of free money will bring back the Iraqi's with gumption enough to leave from where they have fled too and some of the drive that repaired Japan and Germany will come with them...
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posted
I can't believe that dumping large amounts of free money into an economy would make industry thrive. Or that you'll make money for the government by having government give money away and taxing it (!).
I also have trouble believing that paying someone $450 per month will stop him from becoming a terrorist. If that's the plan.
Still, if Iraqi oil revenues are currently being paid to the Iraqi treasury, and are more than sufficient to the government's needs, surely it would be OK to give it away.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Southern Reconstruction posed one of the stickier wickets in our nation building history. We limped through, and it would have been nice if what little awful wisdom we gleaned from trying to rebuild the American South was used to shed some light on the problems in Iraq.
Educational planning and support, business planning and support, unless you build a support structure, 450 dollars isn't a livelihood.
What a world? How far have we come where it's me counseling against throwing money at the problem.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote: Hang on, hang on - if you give everyone $450 each month, who's going to do the work? It seems to me that you risk creating one hell of an inflation this way. Are you going to start importing absolutely everything, down to and including chickens?
If you do someone has to drive the trucks and they better get paid pretty well to do it.
This is how Israel was built, I saw one Palestinian rant that he could look up the hill at land his fathers once owned from his shack inside a slum and see a modern complex with all the comforts... what he did not point out was that it was a barren hillside then and his slum was a goat pasture nibbled to nothing...
Their are lots of consumer goods that will be bought up, but most will buy necessities that have been put off, this will create employment simply because there is not enough money 'get ahead' remember the thing that drives a man is not that he has enough, it is his place in his peer group. They will still strive to stand out for the prize that has always meant the most... pride of place...
Posts: 475 | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote: I also have trouble believing that paying someone $450 per month will stop him from becoming a terrorist. If that's the plan.
It will not but it will raise the price of making him, right now the going rate to put in IED is less ten dollars to risk death... As with Russia we can certainly outspend the insurgencey.
quote: I can't believe that dumping large amounts of free money into an economy would make industry thrive. Or that you'll make money for the government by having government give money away and taxing it (!).
This is rudementary economics, it is or may seem counterintuitive but I assure you and many others here will confirm that money will come back in both taxes and growth.
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posted
Better yet, let's enter peaceful, open negotiations with the people we've dubbed "terrorist" and find out what they really want.
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
What you haven't watched a Bush press conference lately?
They want to kill Americans and they hate freedom and obstruct democracy. That's all they want to do, and they have zero motivation or reason to do so other than religious fervor. I mean, duh.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: What you haven't watched a Bush press conference lately?
They want to kill Americans and they hate freedom and obstruct democracy. That's all they want to do, and they have zero motivation or reason to do so other than religious fervor. I mean, duh.
*chuckles*
Oh, how silly of me. You're absolutely right. Those durn freedom-hating terrorists.
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
I'll have to think about what you said, General. I don't think terrorists are in it for the cash -- ! -- but it'll be interesting to think about what kind of investments bring a big payoff (the $450 thing).
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Millions are already going to the insurgents, they use them to buy the help and loyalty of the poor and desperate, nothing makes a man sit on his butt like a comfortable house, a full belly and night of HBO.
As I said this is oil money, their money, and the cost of doing it will not be greater then it would cost to implement a tax system...
If the insurgents have to match the pay level then they will go broke. They are already running on empty.
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posted
Given the rapid growth of Islam, it is conceivable that we will eventually have a Muslim president.
Barack Obama comes from Muslim roots.
There is talk of growing the Caliphate here at home.
Maybe the fear of an eventual Muslim president is why they're letting all those Catholic voters into the country.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
This article addresses many of the questions and outlines many of the reasons why we need to press for this action. It focuses on the economic implications and the political aspects making the military advantages serendipitous. For those that do not know the Marine Corp has been issuing Id's to those returning to Falluja with the result of far greater control and security. Why Pay out the oil Revenues?Posts: 475 | Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
I think a far more productive path would be to simply educate the Iraq people in the realities of life. I keep wondering where the 'blunt and to the point' news casts are? Do we go on the air and point out to these people, that THEY are killing themselves. That Iraq is killing more innocent people than the USA. When the engineers are killed or power and water plants are bombed, who goes on the air and points out that, YOU can't complain because YOU have no water or power when YOU are destroying the people and property that provide those commodity? When a Mosque is attacked who goes on the air and explains to the people that truly religious men don't bomb churches?
Who goes on the air and explains to the people of Iraq that misery, tyranny, chaos, killing, and war will only bring them misery, tyranny, chaos, killng and war? Who explains to them that if they will sieze the opportunity they can control their own destiny? Who explains to them that chaos brings misery and poverty; the key to prosperity is stability? Just look at the extremely prosperous countries in the middle east, they are the countries with the least internal conflict and oppression. Find a way to work together or accept misery as a way of life.
If they would only get their heads out of the asses and form a stable government, they could over time mold that government into a model that servered them best, and equally served the greater good.
Once the people of Iraq band together to oppose greedy irrational minority forces that are destablizing their country. Once they decide that they will work together to have a fair, stable, and just government, only then will they have a fair, stable, and just government. They are free to choose chaos and misery, but they have to accept that that chaos and misery was a choice they made.
Right now too many people in Iraq are simply sitting on the fense, and reasonably so. If you take sides and your side loses, that is surely death, but some things are worth dying for. Sometimes you have to take a stand regardless of the price, and to do nothing, most likely, is also death. So, are you willing to die for something that is just and true, that promises a better life for your children, or are you just willing to die for nothing. The choice is theirs. Oppose insanity and embrace stabiliy, or accept the misery of your choices.
Regardless of the outcome, I think the responsibility and the blame needs to be dumped squarely in the laps of the people of Iraq. They get the country they create. That message needs to be drummed into them over and over and over until they finally get it.
posted
What you say is true, but your approach is exactly back-wards. Educating people is the "we stay for twenty years" method. What happens is that as long as the concentrated oil wealth is in the hands of the government it remains an attractive force to the wrong kinds of people, people who want to use it (and it has been used many times and places) to maintain minority control and power and finance some hella warped crap.
It is much more difficult to re-concentrate that wealth once it is in peoples hands, bad people and good people kind of cancel each other out and the result is something like peace and prosperity.
The article I linked gives the gist of these issues and I think that you might give it a glance...
Posts: 475 | Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
Comrade Sax has a point on where the money is coming from; quite apart from issues of effectiveness, the oil belongs in some sense to all Iraqis, and there is no reason only a few should benefit. (Norway does something similar, with a huge amount of oil profit being channeled into a government fund, with the government not allowed to touch the principal - thus the money is preserved for all Norwegians, and we invest the profit in, ok, welfare.) Never mind the economic issues, in justice the money could well go to all Iraqis.
I'm rather more puzzled about the motivation issue. Would you agree, then, that welfare payments in the US are not a problem, because people will be motivated to get off them in order to get ahead? If not, what's the difference between Iraqis and Americans?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote: I'm rather more puzzled about the motivation issue. Would you agree, then, that welfare payments in the US are not a problem, because people will be motivated to get off them in order to get ahead? If not, what's the difference between Iraqis and Americans?
The poverty line. It is far too comfortable to be on the dole in the US. In fact I know many who go back to work at a loss of spending power. The US has vast differences in cost of living, so what might be subsidence in LA can be a good living in Missouri, even difference within a State, say Illinois, Chicago vs downstate is unbelievable, or Miami vs South Florida.
Also the income from Oil Drilling is effectively an asset that belongs to the entire body politic, it is not only a good idea to distribute it economically, it is just.
Welfare is not in fact surplus profit from government managed resource sales, it is gleaned via taxation of income, clearly a force for slowing an economy (Due to a reduction in disposable income and the inevitable friction of bureaucratic oversight) in the long run Welfare and all socialism acts as a break on the economy. If Europe had to worry about its own security these days the socialism there would not only have slowed economies it would have caused them to already reach the point of failure.
However paying the people for the lost non renewable oil is their right. Currently the operating theory is that the peoples representatives are the best ones to spend that money in the peoples interest. However, they have failed (proved wasteful, greedy, corrupt and inept) in that duty, and it is time to let the people do with it as they would they will not do worse.
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posted
Who said anything about putting it to a vote, it is in the constitution that the oil wealth belongs to all the people, so it is a done deal, it is all a question of style of execution. If we insist it will happen, despite our very nice demeanor we are the conquerors there. More to the point if we leave the Sunni's are all dead, and so are many of the Shia. All we have to do is go limp if they refuse, walk away... in other words do as we say or we let you die.
Posts: 475 | Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
Yeah, you took the words out of my mouth, who said anything about democracy?
Shiite militias and the Kurdish military establishment care as much about your constitutional jabberings as they do about anything else we have to say to them. They'll accept everything until they are told to give up something they don't want to give up.
If we insist, they'll tell us to shut up, if we force the issue, they aren't just going to lay down. You're pretty naive if you think I meant democracy, and even more so if you think we could make that stick.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
If we leave, the Saudis have said they will support the Sunnis (or, so says the report). Meanwhile, Iran plans to support al Sadr and his Shi'ite militias.
posted
I am afraid that you actually believe in our paralysis, and that is a mistake, if some group decides to 'not take it laying down' we will target them and they will die or find themselves in prison. It is so hard to find good targets these days.
Once the system is up and running, promises made and Id's issued it will have built up so much anticipation in the populace that it will have an inertia that is unstoppable. All the various groups will get behind it in order to claim that they were responsible for it, there is still a need to appeal to the populace if you want a government job, and we are going to beat Saddar and his militia yet again making membership in the groups trying to coerce from the outside that much less attractive.
Posts: 475 | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:Once the system is up and running, promises made and Id's issued it will have built up so much anticipation in the populace that it will have an inertia that is unstoppable.
Yeah, just like the elections did!
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Yes the elections were carried out and each one brought in more of the populace and was carried out with less violence, I am sorry if you meant that to be a negative comment but you are clearly deeply affected by media spin on this matter.
The situation is not remotely hopeless, not only is my option available and workable but other options are as well. Your hopelessness is really a form of laziness, in front of us is a problem that needs to be worked to a resolution, not a trashed house that we should just bulldoze.
I would be more favorably impressed if you showed an understanding of the problem and offered solutions or helped refine details of the solution I offer. Regurgitation media spin that serves no purpose except revenge on the President for being who he is, is beneath this discussion. (or so I deem it)
Posts: 475 | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:I think a far more productive path would be to simply educate the Iraq people in the realities of life.
One person's realities, are another person's hegemony.
Exactly. I'm sure they'd love to educate us in the realities of life, as well. Such as that it's not considered nice to invade other countries when you have little reason to do so.
Posts: 1006 | Registered: Jun 2006
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quote: Exactly. I'm sure they'd love to educate us in the realities of life, as well. Such as that it's not considered nice to invade other countries when you have little reason to do so.
Yes they taught that to Kuwait as well, sheesh I thought this was the place to come for intelligent discussion, is there no such place on the net?
Posts: 475 | Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
We cannot 'teach' them anything in a timely fashion, at best we could isolate and attempt to reeducate their children, a thing I am sure we cannot do deliberately as well as they (the children) will do themselves through media exposer and getting to know our troops in the field.
We must work with the flaws they have, magnified versions of flaws we share, we must accept the absence of key and ordinary virtues we possess in our society and use a method that will motivate the people in a direction we approve and at the same time weaken the power of the corrupt individuals that gravitate too power and the control of wealth in Iraq, essentially thugs.
Posts: 475 | Registered: Aug 2006
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Start giving all Iraqi's between 18 and 25 years of age X dollars a week to be deposited in a retirement they can't touch until, well, retirement. On top of this have a dollar for dollar match on any income they accumulate and deposit in a retirement savings account. Imagine for the sake of example that the national retirement age there will be 65 when the current 18 to 25 year olds reach that age. They (the demand siders) now have a huge incentive to make the Iraqi currency as valuable as possible.
On top of that, instate the provision that in the meantime all those unspendable nestegg can only be invested by companies that are majority owned by the Iraqi private sector. Make an industry for managing the investment of these nesteggs, with as much competition as possible. so the nestegg managers now have an incentive to actually build the Iraqi economy, not simply use other peoples money to pay favours to their business friends.
So the US (or the World Bank) provides the seed capital; and the Iraqi's themselves increase their wealth with it. With or without these payments having to be repaid, I believe this type of system could spur development through the entire third world and bring millions out of poverty. Of course, I just thought of it off the top of my head; so maybe not.
Posts: 1138 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
The plan ignores the current needs of the Iraqi's and is much like the system in place in Alaska, paying out interest on capital invested rather then the capital itself, it also ignores life expectancy issues that have the average Iraqi dead by 45.
It is far more intelligent to allow the Iraqi's the disposable income and let that wealth attract the foreign investment in goods and services. If the average Iraqi chooses to be frugal then his account balance will grow and earn interest, it can be turned over at an artificial retirement age if such is desired but why? Remember that retired or not the money keeps rolling in as long as the oil rolls out.
In Saudi Arabia and other 'wealthy' oil countries the government elites provide hospitals and schools and housing to the people, but this is all done in economy sized generic boxes. It also provides a means of control, for curriculum, for types of care available, for programing and publication, it becomes as in Venezuela the vehicle to give some very twisted individuals a constituency to give them legitimacy.
I cannot speak for other third world countries, I think that for the most part they tend to grow in population faster then they build value, so pieces of the pie never grow, or in another way of stating it the problems grow faster then the solutions.
However in the case of Iraq, the money is in fact owed to the people, and they are in fact not receiving the value of it from their government, they are in fact owed that money and the failure to repay it is exactly the failure of the Iraqi Government that we must help them redress.
Posts: 475 | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:Originally posted by General Sax: Yes the elections were carried out and each one brought in more of the populace and was carried out with less violence, I am sorry if you meant that to be a negative comment but you are clearly deeply affected by media spin on this matter.
The situation is not remotely hopeless, not only is my option available and workable but other options are as well. Your hopelessness is really a form of laziness, in front of us is a problem that needs to be worked to a resolution, not a trashed house that we should just bulldoze.
I would be more favorably impressed if you showed an understanding of the problem and offered solutions or helped refine details of the solution I offer. Regurgitation media spin that serves no purpose except revenge on the President for being who he is, is beneath this discussion. (or so I deem it)
Read the Iraq Commission Report, then come back and talk to me. If you think you know more than them, I'd like to know why. I've given my ideas for what to do with the situation on several other threads, and since you don't really seem to understand the situation at all, especially if you think Iraqi Debit cards are going to fix everything, I see no reason to invest the effort in reformulating them here.
Show that you have some grasp of truth of the situation over there, then we'll talk.
Edit to add: As a sidenote, do you know why no one is investing any money now, in what should be a nation ripe for investment? Because there's no stability or safety there. You aren't going to get foreign investment dollars until they stop being worried about insurgent bombs blowing up their investments.
Waving a money stick at Iraq isn't going to do that. Who would administer it? The US? That's a joke. I can see the bumper stickers now: "USA: Screwing up Iraq Since Paul Bremer." And God knows the Civilian authorities over there are even more of a joke. al-Sadr controls several ministries and their security forces, to say nothing of the several thousand man army that outnumbers OUR forces in Baghdad. It'd take a massive troop commitment, and it'd probably kill thousands of Iraqi civilians, if it doesn't totally level parts of Baghdad entirely, to root them all out and kill them. And even after you've done that, who's to say you haven't created something even worse?
You don't know what's going on over there. I don't get all my information off CNN, and you sound as if you get yours from some Republican Blog.
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I've read the report, it is the joke, I would reference the idiocy in it but their are a dozen run downs on the thing already, the fact that you value it tells me that my guess about your sources of information is exactly correct.
The military can oversee it, or do you "Support the troops" but really think they are as you put it "a joke?"
If taking out al-Sadr creates new problems then at least their will be a negative incentive to picking a militia over the Government in the next round. It will come to that in the end, and we will handle Sadr again, it is what we do better then anybody else, ever...
Right now the military is already administering an ID card in Falluja, it is as I have said very effective. (note: that this is in a place where the nay sayers said the same thing as you are saying about Sadr, to hard, too tough, will just create too many new problems. Yet Falluja is recovering and doing so in a remarkably peacefully)
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Have you ever seen a billion dollars? The point being, I don't have to go there to get a good idea as to what the situation is. In the same sense that your going there doesn't show you the whole picture, it shows you bits and pieces.
quote:I've read the report, it is the joke, I would reference the idiocy in it but their are a dozen run downs on the thing already, the fact that you value it tells me that my guess about your sources of information is exactly correct.
I have no reason to disbelieve their information on the situation as it stands. It was formulated by talking to generals, heads of states, government officials, in other words, people who had access to the necessary information, and who had been involved in the area or the situation for years and years, or in Baker's case, for decades.
What exactly are you working with? Anecdotal information? O'Reilley? Just curious, since you've yet to share where your information comes from, or your reasons for attacking the Iraq Commission.
quote:If taking out al-Sadr creates new problems then at least their will be a negative incentive to picking a militia over the Government in the next round. It will come to that in the end, and we will handle Sadr again, it is what we do better then anybody else, ever...
Again, that shows ignorance of Middle Eastern history. I assume you've heard of Palestine, Israel and Lebanon right? Governmental violence against insurgents has not proven to be a great deterrent in the last 50 years, why is it you think we can get it done in the next year or two? Violence begets violence over there, you haven't figured that out in the last four years? You just want to throw money and troops at a problem with ANY idea of what might happen in the blind HOPE that it might work, and if it makes the situation worse? Well we'll just take it from there won't we? There's like sixteen levels of thought missing from your planning.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote: You just want to throw money and troops at a problem with ANY idea of what might happen in the blind HOPE that it might work, and if it makes the situation worse?
Actually I want the Iraqi people to have the power to spend their money as they see fit. How it turns out is not our responsibility it is theirs, we do not have the right to withhold it out of fear of what they might do with their power.
As for this being analogous to the Palestinians, the Sunni's do not make a very credible persecuted minority, nobody is going to believe it and they themselves do not feel that way.
And Al Sadr has grown too dangerous for us to let him continue, he is setting up an competing military in Iraq when our major mission objective is to train the fledgling military, he must and will be dealt with.
While the panel in questions had plenty of facts to push around they came home with the opinions they left with, not credible nor useful. The President lays out our military objectives, he is the C and C not Congress or some group of well intentioned busybodies.
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posted
Yes, that confirms your liberal world view, the smug certainty that dogma disguised as 'facts that everyone knows' is reality. That followed by a doctrine of faith that the quagmire is going to eat us if we do not quit provoking it and there is nothing that we can do about it.
However, there is a growing movement on the Right that wants that money in the hands of the Iraqi people, because they believe in Freedom and dollars are choices, because the believe in Justice and paying a man for what you take is Just, and because they know that if you take the wealth out of the hand of government and figure out who your citizenship is, you deal a double blow to crime and corruption.
The Left would love it too if the were capable of inductive reasoning, after all they have been using the same argument to get drugs legalized for years, take the profit out of it and you take the criminal out of it, we have a government that by our standards is criminal (which is saying alot given the level of corruption we live with in our system) so lets take the profit out of it for them and get rid of the gangsters, or at least put them on the other side.
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posted
As opposed to a Right that supposedly hates government interference and regulation, but believes that its religious induced morality should be able to limit what American citizens can and can't do?
When you talk about Iraqis and money, what money are you talking about? Specifically.
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posted
Only where it affects another as in abortion, I think that is reasonable. We should let those babies grow up until they can say if they want to be killed or not....
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