Thank you, Representative Miller!  And thank you as well for letting us know, and explaining it, in person (so to speak).

Posted at October 20, 2005 4:28 PM in response to Fighting the Gulf Coast Wage Cut

We didn't just conquer Iraq; we took over its industry, business, and infrastructure, and started putting in military bases and prisons heralding permanent occupation, and implemented an incredible strait-jacket of exploitive rules and restrictions to their government and economy.  I keep reading about how to get out on a military strategy, starting to pull out troops as we train Iraqi replacements, etc.  It seems to me we should first withdraw our takeover of the non-military and back off the military bases, turning the prisons over to the Iraqis.  Make no mistake, these people are fighting to get the foreign occupation and control out of there, one way or another, just as we would if the situation were reversed.  At the very least, this provides the broad public support for the insurgency.  (Not that that precludes intra-Iraq power struggles, by any means)  Without us the Iraqis would have to turn their attention to the remaining problems.

Without the leaden U.S. economic foot on their necks, and with the obvious statement of abandoning the notion of numerous military bases, it seems to me the anti-American aspects of the insurgency would ease up.  Turning over their infrastructure to them would leave them, rather than us, responsible for the thankless attempts to rebuild in the face of the violence of insurgency.  It's not as if they don't have, or can't get for themselves, plenty of expertise and labor for this.  The insurgency also would no longer have the excuse of hampering those efforts to attack the U.S.  This and the halt on base construction would also relieve a lot of U.S. forces of the demands of protecting those workers.  We could, OTOH, expand some protection toward relief organization representatives, such as Doctors Without Borders, etc.--unless our "protection" would actually draw more fire than it would curb.

At that point, the U.S. could likely concentrate on a few key areas, defensively, move out some forces, and wait for the inevitable working out of the inter-Iraqi tensions and animosity, setting some criteria for more withdrawals.  It's not going to be pretty--much internal conflict has been fomented, or exploded opportunistically, but that would happened, i suspect, no matter what we did or do--it's just worse and nastier because of our actions.

The Iraqis by now have people who are undoubtedly more savvy about insurgency than the U.S. is, and international camps could be offered to provide police and other training  until the Iraqis could take over their own training.  

 This is not a wonderful solution, but I'm not sure there is one.

Posted at June 3, 2005 5:57 PM in response to Back to the Present