Putting people out of work might be the biggest mistake a liberator could make, says Marshall Adame, who worked on Iraq reconstruction projects with The Sandi Group and as a senior US advisor to the Iraqi government from 2003 until late 2006:
Iraq is not now, or in 2003, a country without professional organizations, associations, business structures and contractor networks. Iraqi engineers, construction contractors, lawyers, doctors, business managers, city planners and educators were present and readily available throughout Iraq. Almost none of which were accessed or utilized by the coalition in its effort to begin the rebuilding of Iraq…. The point being, from the very beginning we put the Iraqi people at arms length and have, to this day, kept them there.
In other words…
the occupying US presence signaled to the 27 million Iraqis liberated from Saddam Hussein’s brutal iron fist — a population equal to California’s — that they were not to be trusted with rebuilding their own country. (….And now not trusted to protect it?)
Unsettling, Provocative Thoughts:
Sunni insurgents, Shia Militias, and corrupt Iraqi Government officials, all profiting from our presence, and all hoping to profit from our absence. In the middle, the Iraqi people, the vast majority of whom are not in support of Islamic extremism, sectarian isolation, religious theocracy, or violence in any form against anyone or any group. An innocent people, now living in a hell they had no part of bringing.
Adame, by the way, has two sons who served in Iraq with the US Army.
The Point Is, and It’s No Secret: The Coalition, i.e., the United States chose not to use Iraq’s most valuable resource in the reconstruction effort: its people:
“In fact it has been official policy to exclude Iraqis from almost any coalition operation or endeavor. The Iraqi labor pool has been all but ignored. Third County Nationals have been shipped in by the thousands to work in positions that should have gone to the people we came to Iraq to rescue, the Iraqis.”
Instead, the occupying coalition relied on foreign contractors and workers to do the work. And that may be just why the situation is what it is today.
Adame’s commentary is floating around the Web. It’s worth a read.
