How about bribery instead of occupation?
In this post on Sullivan's blog, a reader writes:
Still, I think bribery might be a lot more effective than a botched occupation. Handing out a stream of money to key leaders of the insurgency, and tying it to decrease in the violence might not be a bad idea. Aren't bribery and corruption Republicans fortes? And the best thing is, if it fails, American soldiers don't have to die. And the cost of trying this would be spread over the whole country (in the form of taxes or more likely, increased debt) rather than focused unfairly on our troops.
Someone ought to at least look into this: what leaders are bribable, how much would it take, etc. Are we already doing this? Shouldn't we have done it a long time ago? Ideally, it should have been set up before the invasion so that everyone important and dangerous would have been on the "payroll" already. Of course, instead we disbanded the whole army, kicking a bunch of people with lots of weapons and training off the payroll.
Does anyone in the Bush administration take this occupation seriously? From appearances, no.
With that in mind, I think it is our responsibility to throw everything we have at this to fix it. If it means doubling the Army by starting the draft again, let's do it. If it means paying every Iraqi $1000 to stop fighting, lets raise those taxes and start sending checks.I'd just like to point out that paying every Iraqi $1000 would only cost about 27 billion dollars, according to the population stats I've seen. Frankly, that's not that much compared to the approximately 350 billion that this site claims we've already spent. I don't expect that this would work well, though. If someone murdered a member of my family, $1000 wouldn't make me calm down.
Still, I think bribery might be a lot more effective than a botched occupation. Handing out a stream of money to key leaders of the insurgency, and tying it to decrease in the violence might not be a bad idea. Aren't bribery and corruption Republicans fortes? And the best thing is, if it fails, American soldiers don't have to die. And the cost of trying this would be spread over the whole country (in the form of taxes or more likely, increased debt) rather than focused unfairly on our troops.
Someone ought to at least look into this: what leaders are bribable, how much would it take, etc. Are we already doing this? Shouldn't we have done it a long time ago? Ideally, it should have been set up before the invasion so that everyone important and dangerous would have been on the "payroll" already. Of course, instead we disbanded the whole army, kicking a bunch of people with lots of weapons and training off the payroll.
Does anyone in the Bush administration take this occupation seriously? From appearances, no.
Comments
(Or maybe it would just cause inflation. I don't know about these things)
I think we need to get out of there, or at least withdraw to US-friendly areas.