I often consider how much money America spends on "defence." Our defence bill this year far exceeds 400 billion dollars. By 2010 it is set to exceed 500 billion dollars. Some of the rise in spending is a pay increase for soldiers. This is a good thing. That number will rise to about 100 billion dollars. But when you think about the fact that we have almost 1.5 million active troops, the average pay would be around $70,000 per soldier. But the highest pay of course goes to the military personel who are least at risk. Most soldiers are sold short. For example, a private in the Army, one of our boys on the front lines, typically makes less than 17,000 dollars per year to risk his or her life. The Airforce gets the biggest chunk of change (excluding personel pay), getting an increase from 108 billion dollars up to almost 114 billion. This is where the planes, carriers, big-guns, big-bullets and bombs come in. That's where the big money to be made is for the private corporations who have the big lobby power. This is war-making and not peace keeping money.
Many of our soldiers are still underequipped, still driving around under-armoured Humvees, even while their ammo bags are full and the planes flying overhead are overloaded with overly expensive weapons, with all too much killing power. The way we are carrying out this "war" puts our troops in harms way far too often because far too often their missions end up demonizing them in the eyes of the people.
Lets look at what happened yesterday for example. A house in Baquebah, 35 miles north of Baghdad, was entered by troops, and then they called in an airstrike. 8 civilians were killed. 4 men and 4 women. Witnesses said the attack was unprovoked. A mother was making breakfast. Suddenly people started getting shot. The soldiers were looking for insurgents, but is this the right way to do it? To make the Iraq people feel fear all the time, to enter their sovereign homes, and sometimes kill them, even innocent women and children, how can it make the Iraq people feel any other way about us than that we are the enemy, be they insurgents or not. This is war-making not peace keeping.
We need to completely change the policy in Iraq, stop looking at it as a war between us and them, between America and the "terrorists" we seem to be inviting there every day to fight us. We can learn a lesson from Hizbullah, which is right now in the midst of a huge propaganda campaign all over Lebanon. It is doing vigorous PR work. They are a humanitarian force in Lebanon, they help with education, health-care, food, protection. They are trying to minimize their "terrorist" aspect.
We can do more of this in Iraq. We have to face the fact that to many in the Middle East, we are the terrorists. We must make ourselves useful. We should have more of our qualified military personel out there in the field making sure the people of Iraq have electricity 24 hours a day, making sure that they have running water, plenty to eat, our troops need to patrol the markets, protect the Sunni's from the Shia insurgents, and vice-versa. We have so many resources to help the country rebuild its infrastructure. We need to get that place up and running. If our soldiers need to fight, then we can fight. But we need to be doing more to foster friendship between Sunni and Shia, and between ourselves and both of these groups. We probably need more soldiers not less. But we need to start protecting them by making them more of a peace-keeping force. We need more diplomats as well; Arabic speaking people and a good PR firm. We have to understand that in the Middle East we aren't in Kansas anymore. But some rules still remain true. A little bit of honey smooths a wound a lot better than a gun in the face.
We need to end the "war on terror" as it exists now. It's not working any more than the "war on drugs." This is a war of ideas, and we need to put far more energy into fostering a new image for ourselves. As it is now, we are empowering the "terrorists" by frequently making ourselves look like the bad guy. We give them the high ground, and it comes back to them in the form of heightened power and control. We are in Iraq now, and we need to help sort things out there. I don't think we can just pull out and abandon the country to the insane state it is in: a state we helped put it in, albeit unintentionally. It scares me when the left starts talking about just abandoning the Iraq mission. We should have done that 4 years ago, but it's too late now. We need to change course there, yes, but we need to stay there.
The way to beat the insurgents is to take their friends away. Take away their support, help turn people against them, the Shiite community against the Mahdi Army, and the Sunni's against the Sunni killing teams. Many Sunni's are already turning away from them because they are so careless with the lives of Iraq civilians. People are growing tired of the suicide bombings, and they are seeing that things are not getting better. When we blow houses up and kill civilians or people that we don't absolutely know are terrorists, we do not help ourselves nor the people of Iraq. We need to do more to protect the people. Knocking on doors looking for weapons is foolish. A terrorist behind a door is no threat. He is a threat when he leaves his house, and this is where we should be looking for him. If we want the tables to turn on our image, people must feel safe in their homes, at least not threatened by us there. Little acts go a long way.
I really believe that by doing more to help the Iraq people get back to normal life, which means making sure they have electricity, water, and safe places to shop for food, with more emphasis on communication, with a clear plan and clear intentions, we can help stem the the tide of hatred which is washing over us. We need more Arabic speaking soldiers to do be doing friendly communication and PR with the Iraqi citizens. And we need to use the violence and brutality of the insurgents against them. Which means a war of information. We don't need to lower ourselves to their level. We can take the higher ground and show the people (presently 47% of the Iraq population and up to 88% of the Sunni Arab minority think military attacks on Coalition forces are legitimate resistance to what they often see as an occupying force) that we are friends to them more than the insurgency are.
(this might seem a bit optimistic, but we have to start making changes. If what is going now is not working, just a little change might open up a whole new view to us, and suddenly things can get better. My point is that we must come up with something, some plan, and then start moving. We can't expect things to get better if we keep doing the same things that have not worked and that we have been doing as things have deteriorated.)
More to come.
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