Winning the war in Iraq

[plural]

budhaboy got me thinking about the subject, so here goes.

Crossposted to debate

The question I often wonder listening to much of the debate and/or discussion over the Iraq war/occupation is what exactly do people really want? From my point of view, We invaded Iraq, got rid of an ugly dictator, this is a good thing, even if one doesnt buy the whole WMD reasoning (of which even I have my doubts). Now those people who were against the war to begin with, are using the prison scandal, the guerrilla warfare and civilian death tolls to argue against leaving Iraq. Personally, I see a clear responsibility on our part to buckle down and complete the job, pacify the resistance, and set up a functioning democratic and free country. I think people overall seem to have an unrealistic expectation as to how long this will take and what it will cost both in lives (US & Iraqi) and in money. I expect this overall process to take about ten years, allowing for gradual troop withdrawls after the first five or six.

I also think people need to realize that this is an ugly job in an ugly part of the world, and to expect life there to resemble an american city in six months is ridiculous.

That said, Bush is without a doubt fucking up, of course it isnt like anyone is helping him either, so we all bear some complicity.

So I propose the Plural plan for Iraq, and I will seperate each stage into three parts, Military, Economic and Politcal:

Stage One: [Timeline - the next 6 months]
Military: Double the US military forces on the ground, if necessary take troops from places like Germany to bolster our troop strength
Economic: Institute a comprehensive social welfare and home/business rebuilding program to feed, clothe and help them get their homes and business operating normally again
Political: Create a constitution & civil and criminal codes of law

Stage Two: [Timeline - 6 to 18 months out]
Military: Complete pacification of all resistance, identify areas of guerilla activity, isolate them and summarily execute one in ten males of military age in those areas.
Economic: Reopen the Iraqi oil pipelines and start selling their oil to help pay for the rebuilding of Iraq, provide preferential consideration to American companies bidding for rebuilding projects.
Political: Train a judiciary, establish civil and criminal courts and give them jurisdiction over Iraqi citizens

Stage Three: [Timeline - 18 to 30 months out]
Military: Train Iraqi police and slowly hand over small areas of territory to their governance [under US military supervision]
Economic: Institute a micro loan program to help Iraqis start businesses and participate/profit from the rebuilding of Iraq
Political: Train civil administrators, mayors, councilmen, and the like, turn over civil administration of towns then cities in a reverse order of size

Stage Four: [Timeline - 30 to 42 months out]
Military: Train and Iraqi Military and slowly hand over small areas or territory for them to secure [under US military supervision]
Economic: Create Iraqi subsidiaries of the American companies operating Iraqis utilities, and oil fields to be run by Iraqis
Political: Establish a limited democratic process by which Mayors and city councilmen can be elected

Stage Five: [Timeline - 42 to 66 months out]
Military: Establish major military bases in strategic areas, to set the groundwork for an american withdrawal
Economic: Create an Iraqi stock market, spin off the American subsidaries creating a critical mass of publicly traded companies within Iraq, limit initial IPO purchases to Iraqi nationals.
Political: Create a national congress, expand the existing democratic process to elect representatives to that body, give them control over regional administration

Stage Six: [Timeline - 66 to 90 months out]
Military: Begin a staged withdrawal of ground forces, leaving only a stabilizing force in the above mentioned bases to support a democratically elected government.
Economic: Re-open the Iraqi market to free international trade
Political: Create an executive branch, expand the existing democratic process to elect a national leader, give them control over national, international and military affairs

Stage Seven: [Timeline 10 years from now]
Having given the political and economic structures two and a half years completely free of American intervention to stabilize, we should be able to withdraw the remaining US forces completely, leaving behind a stable, democratic and free Iraq.

Go us.

Would this work / what would you change?

Is it better than the current administrations plan?

Comments

[lamotocyclette.livejournal.com]

"isolate them and summarily execute one in ten males of military age in those areas."

Urgh! Sorry, but all that is going to do is piss more people, both within and outside of Iraq, off (including me).

You ask if this would work? What would be in it for the US? If nothing, it would never work with our current system of govt.

[plural.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but hopefully it wouldnt have to be done more than once or twice to get the message across, of course, as another person suggested we could do as we did in post war germany when an town was a source of resistance and surround it, close it off, and shell it to dust. Either isnt pretty but makes it abundantly clear the consequences for violent resistance.

While either is equally appalling to me, I also recognize that until we can demonstrate day to day security of person and property in Iraq, the common man will not feel the benefits of the other programs we are putting/trying to put in place to improve the situation, so in a way taking off the gloves is very necessary.

as for what is in it for the US, several things, one pumping Iraqi oil will reduce the cost of oil giving us cheaper gas again, next american companies and thereby the economy will benefit from first from the contracts to rebuild Iraq, then from spinning off their Iraqi subsidiaries. It would mean a lot of money flowing into the american economy for a fairly extended period of time. not to mention finally being a foreign policy in alignment with our more vaunted ideals.

[lamotocyclette.livejournal.com]

I maintain my opinion that killing a large number of Iraqis, especially citizens, will do nothing but further the rest of the world's opinions that we are occupying, not liberating Iraq. Not good.

Our gas is not expensive right now due to a lack of supply of oil. Our gas is expensive right now due to refineries, not supply of crude. We have a huge amount of crude in reserve as it is.

[resilience.livejournal.com]

I'll second you on the fuel price issue, and fuel is my business.

We should see prices go down at least by November... what with it being an election year and all.

[plural.livejournal.com]

hmm, I would be interested in your thoughts on my response to her comment (below). While I am not in the fuel business, I have tried to educate myself on the overall picture over the last few years, and would appreciate it if you could correct any incorrect notions I may have expressed.

[plural.livejournal.com]

I can see your point, perhaps I am simply unimaginative but I see few "nice" ways to pacify the resistance in a timely manner to allow us to move on to the serious and lengthy work of building a democracy. I will allow that there very well maybe be an alternate solution.

Actually it is a combination of the two, the refinery problem is more geographically specific, i.e. much more of a problem on the west coast than the east coast. However, the price of crude has gone up significantly as well, affecting the price of every type of fuel. If it were simply a refinery problem, then things like jet fuel which use a different refinery chain would not be experiencing similar hikes.

As for our huge reserve of crude, it is because for the most part we only use a certain amount of american crude to suppliment imported oil and help keep prices lower, the idea being to reserve as much of our oil resources as possible, instead purchasing middleeastern oil so as to use their reserves up first.

[resilience.livejournal.com]

When I'm back in town, I'll ask my boss for a little more information on this. He's got 15 years of experience in the industry, while I have about 2. But I can give you a little bit of information.

Regarding refineries, you'll see that problems with them will cause fuel prices to rise. Last year, when the power outages hit the northeast, a few refineries were shut down. We had plenty of crude in our reserves, but we weren't producing enough fuel to satisfy the demand. This caused prices to rise. Once the refineries were up and running again, and we caught up with the demand, prices leveled off.

I'll see about getting more info on Tuesday (when I get back in town)... if you'd like. :)

[budhaboy.livejournal.com]

Gas is expensive because of both reasons, actually.

[lamotocyclette.livejournal.com]

We have 69 million barrels in reserve though!

[budhaboy.livejournal.com]

And buying more every day!

Yes, it's true... part of the shortage that is spiking oil prices is due to dubya' insistence to continue stockpiling the stratigic oil reserves.

As for 69M barrels, according to this that's enough to last us about 3.5 days...

that site, the energy information administration will fill you in on any arcane statistic you could possibly want to know about any form of energy.

I rarely hear of it in the news, and only know of its existence because I interviewed with them prior to my coming to work for the BLS.

I particularly like the kid's page hosted by the energy ant:





I don't even want to know how much the feds paid to have some artist come up with that.

[lamotocyclette.livejournal.com]

Ah, sorry, I mistyped. Should be billion, not million.

[budhaboy.livejournal.com]

heh.

Billion?

That would suggest we are keeping 3000 days worth of oil in reserve? nearly 10 years?

I don't think so.

Abraham and other members of the Bush administration have said the reserve should be filled to its capacity of 700 million barrels and only be used for supply disruptions, not to lower prices. The reserve currently holds about 650 million barrels of oil, or 93 percent of capacity.

It's still an obscene amount of oil though, given if we were ever in a position to have to tap it, we'd likely reduce the consumption to something far less than 19M Barrels/day, extending it far beyond the 30(ish) day level they are shooting for.

[lamotocyclette.livejournal.com]

That's just the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

[lamotocyclette.livejournal.com]

Urgh, can't find my original source for that number again. Will have to see if I can find it on my computer at home.
Regardless, I still feel our refinery problem is having a far greater impact on gas prices right now that what we may or may not be importing from Iraq.

[budhaboy.livejournal.com]

Ever since you made your comment, I've been passively trying to remember where I heard the breakdown of the pumpprice of a gallon of gas.

As I write this, I think it was on some cspanradio thing I was listening to...

The basic idea was the two largest parts of the price were Cost of Oil, and Taxes.

Refining, while third, wasn't the prime mover in the cost, as the price of oil has lept something like 30% in the last two months (see that EIA link for actual numbers).

[plural.livejournal.com]

Actually with regards to localized areas refining plays a much larger role.

The west coast of the US has been suffering inflated oil prices off and on for some time due to an lack of refining capabilities there.

While much of the problem out there has been or is being resolved, there was a serious of fires and environmental violations which shut down a significant amount of the refining capacity and raised gas prices.

I recall when I last lived in seattle, prices for gas on the west coast were significantly higher than the midwest and east coast specifically because of the refinery problem.

[budhaboy.livejournal.com]

You know, now that you mention fire, I seem to remember a fire out west in a refinery a few weeks ago...

I could easily believe it's the case.

[lamotocyclette.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's different on the west coast.
Here, it really does seem to be a refinery issue.

[budhaboy.livejournal.com]

I stand corrected.

[budhaboy.livejournal.com]

As for Iraq... The biggest problem with Iraq not producing even to pre war levels, is the Saudis have had to ramp up production to cover the shortfall, leaving them utterly unable to quickly compensate for demand spikes...

This is (IMHO) the primary rationale for some critics to call for stopping the fuelling of the SPR, and even start tapping it (with 670MBarrels, we could easily afford to drop a couple million barrels on the market until the production in Iraq gets up to speed... I mean they keep saying it should only be a week or so for that to happen, right?

:)

[whatdot.livejournal.com]

Relative to world prices, your gas is not expensive right now... nor ever, as it's highly subsidised.

Ours is currently US$2.80/gallon (assuming my currency & imperial conversions were correct)... what's yours?

[lamotocyclette.livejournal.com]

You're arguing with the wrong person. I totally agree. The "our gas is expensive" part is relative to what our prices have been, and in response to plural's own comments.

[budhaboy.livejournal.com]

I paid $2.13/gal for premium yesterday.

I'm not sure why you say it's subsidized... I thought the issue of price disparity was due to taxes.

[plural.livejournal.com]

It isnt subsidized in the conventional sense, it is just that we have a domestic oil supply to help cut down the cost of importing crude. So our average cost per barrel is to the refineries is lower than it would be in say holland or japan which lack significantly large crude deposits. We only import around half of our oil usuage compared to many countries which import nearly all of there oil consumption

but yes our taxes tend to lower as well.

[budhaboy.livejournal.com]

coming from OH (the third largest producer of Crude int the country) most of the people I talked to in the oil bidness there say they don't even start producing oil until it breaks the $25 barrier, because it doesn't pay to perform the OSHA and other regulatory hurdles necessary to produce...

My point is, as prices rise, so does our proportion of domestic production...

Not that this in anyway affects your point, of course.

[plural.livejournal.com]

Its depends where you are at but california broke US$3 a gallon recently