Forget the troops. We need a new approach as a people, coming from the people of the US, bypassing this corrupt and disintegrating administration. We need grassroots power focused on creating the social change that bullets and bombs and white phosphorus cannot ever create.
Iraqis expected the US occupation to result in restored electricity and water, rebuilt infrastructure, and return to a bustling life where work could be found, markets worked, fields cultivated, and their oil production restarted for the benefit of their people, not 13 US oil companies.
While organizing another Boston Tea Party or march on the mall would be fun, let's move on to really mucking things up with offers to help and fix thing in Iraq, like Iraqis sort of were hoping we'd do.
We need to ask each US school to adopt a sister school in Iraq, and get supplies flowing. Maybe we'd learn to learn from each other in the process.
We need to ask each church to adopt a sister mosque or church in Iraq, and find out how to communicate with it, find out what is needed most, and organize to deliver it. Mabye we'd learn to start praying for each other in the process.
We need to ask every city to adopt neighborhoods in Iraq for restoration work. We might learn we can help make each other stronger in the process.
We need to send portable generators and water purifiers to enable the restoration work to commence, along with tools and supplies to rebuild. Clean water and power make life civilized, and it would make us all feel more civilized.
We need to figure out how to get Arabic learning materials and teachers into their schools. And maybe start to learn it ourselves. We've spent a Trillion on this little project, along with many thousands of lives, perhaps it's time to learn a bit more about our hefty investment.
We need to figure out how to rebuild and restaff their hospitals and factories. Health care and meaningful work help make things more civilized too.
This is tougher, but we need to make their universities safe from irrational zealots, allow open enquiry and research grade scholarship again, but that sounds like a heck of a good job for the likes of Blackwater and perhaps our ability to set up satellite telecommunications education networks, and give women students first preference.
We need to connect with local Islamic groups that connect to Iraq...to coordinate and overcome language and culture barriers. We need to actually engage in dialog, and learn how to trust and work with the trustworthy groups.
We need to insist that all profits go to Iraqis first, from oil, for at least the first 5 years of the contracts, with the option to continue that or prorate over time if Iraq is not yet rebuilt. If US companies are rebuilding the oil infrastructure, they should get some reward for that, but not at the expense of hog-tying an entire nation's economic engine of recovery.
These are just a few ideas I've had in the last few minutes. I sure would welcome improvements, additions, revisions, but let's not just object to the administration's idiocies, and move on to fixing what's been broken. The world is watching for signs of Spring, renewal and sanity to return to America...let's give them all something worth seeing.