Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

So I do believe the first goal of creating a stable Iraq is full employment for Iraqis. In a traditional culture, in order for a man to participate in society,  marry and own a house, he must have a job.  This administration has hired U.S. Corporations to do much of the reconstruction.  These companies have been hiring people from places like Louisiana and Bangladesh to run the equipment and do the labor in Iraq.  It is time to transition from outside work forces to an Iraqi work force.  It is their country and they need to participate in rebuilding it.  A job gives them a stake in the outcome as well as a way to participate in a civil society.

Isn't that the goal, a civil society.  The word "civil" in the dictionary says courteous and polite.   I would add with the rule of law and security for the people who live within its borders.  
In traditional cultures, in order to have money and participate in the culture, you need a way to make a living.  Work that pays money to buy food, pay rent and raise children.  A job is an entry point and a contains a set of rules as to what is appropriate in the culture.  

A civil society provides schools to teach the children to read, write, how to become better farmers and tradesmen.  How to raise healthier children that will be productive and honorable members of their communities.  

A civil society provides the infrastructure that make trade and daily life possible.  It takes generations to create transportation corridors and infrastructure.  In order for commerce to take place, a road, safe to travel, is a basic first step.

So how to create employment.  This will be a bitter suggestion.  We must work with the existing power structures within Iraqi society and that would include al Sadar and al Sistani.  They have the organization necessary to set up work projects.  Offer them, and other Iraqis with similar organizations,  funds to begin the rebuilding process.

So our second step is to create of fund to support this rebuilding. It would be a  double audited trust fund for Iraqis to draw from with a beginning balance of say $25 Billion.  The fund would be audited by the General Accounting Office in the United States and an international agency such as the U.N., the IMF or the World Bank.

These funds would be available to build and operate schools, clinics, hospitals, public infrastructure in Iraq for the benefit of Iraqis living in Iraq.  The organization applying for funds would be allowed to apply for more funds when they comply with and pass the audit for  their previous contract.

Funds should also be set aside as grants for small businesses.  Requiring full audits, of course. There is an important point of law in Islam.  The Koran forbids making money on money.  In other words, the Koran forbids interest (U.S. banks feint at the thought).  One of the problems of integrating Muslims into British culture has been that they, Muslims, cannot accept traditional housing loans.  They cannot pay interest.  So Great Britain has created special lending institutions that charge the buyer the full price of the house (in the U.S. that would be cost plus interest) at the date of purchase and then a portion of that is paid each month until the full amount is paid off.

This is, of course, semantics to us; however, these are the rules of civilized behavior according to their culture.  Customs that will not change to fit our definition of a proper economy.   So if we want small Iraqi businesses to get up and running quickly it will be necessary to make grants available and create a bureaucracy to see that the businesses are legitimate.  Considering the money currently being defrauded by U.S. Corporations we can't lose much more giving it to Iraqi's.

Our next step would be for the U.S. Military to move to secure the borders.  As it leaves, it sweeps for weapons to the best of its ability, either blowing caches up or capturing them and removing them.  The vacuum they leave behind is filled with Iraqi police and military.  This might draw insurgents out of the city centers in pursuit of the U.S. where they could be destroyed in the open, but, that is probably wishful thinking at this point.

How long this takes, I have no idea.  I do know that stacking the rubble by hand, putting mesh around it and covering it with stucco to create borders would take quite a bit of time, require relatively unskilled labor and keep lots of people very busy and way to tired at the end of the day to have much energy left over for warfare.  

The military will point out that walls would give the enemy places to hide to attack the military.   That would be a point well taken.  So, in order to move the process into fast forward, I suggest we contact the military grunts that have been written about in  Cobra II and other reports coming out of Iraq and ask them what projects can be done.  Now.  What projects can be organized, and up and running in the short term to create the jobs necessary for security to exist.

It is time to send the expensive suits back to their teak desks and ask the people who know. Ask our military grunts and the people living in Iraq. They know.  They are the ones most likely to provide workable suggestions.  They are also the ones least likely to be included in the conversation.  Expensive suits hate to be shown up by people from outside the board room.  More important, what does a man worth $200 Million (Donald Rumsfeld) know of stacking rubble?

If you like this idea, I suggest you send it to your member of Congress as well as a few friends.  The only way to fix this mess is from the bottom up.  The top has completely failed in every aspect of this war.