Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KyrosL who wrote (98952)	5/23/2003 5:18:31 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

I saw Tom Friedman on the The Newshour last night. He had an interesting explanation. He said that the US had planned to decapitate the regime, remove the top bad guys, then rule Iraq via its existing institutions. But when the regime fell, the institutions all imploded too, and the Iraqis responded with a perfect orgy of looting. So now all the institutions don't have records, furniture, lights, electrical wiring, anything. Tom Friedman said, "the one thing that surprised me is how broken the Iraqi people are by Saddam's regime, and how desperate. They don't know each other. They haven't had a horizontal conversation in thirty years; they had a top-down monologue. We aren't starting from zero in Iraq. We're starting from below zero." It's easy to sit in an armchair and say, "you should have forseen this". But show me anyone who did forsee it. The question is now, how fast can they adapt?

To: KyrosL who wrote (98952)	5/23/2003 10:04:50 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

A lot of money needs to be injected immediately throughout Iraq to counteract the debilitating effects of the looting. It's not just to counteract the effects of the looting. Iraq before the war was a wildly state-centered economy, and the government was by far the largest employer. Since we are now the government, it's up to us to pay the salaries. Obviously weaning people off the government payroll and onto some sort of private enterprise system is an important - and horrendously difficult - task. Until it's done, though, we are the boss, and if the boss wants loyalty, salaries have to be paid. One of the things we most needed to bring in the aftermath of the war was cash, and lots of it. We were way too late with way too little in that department. Buying loyalty is crude, but it works, and it's a whole lot cheaper than suppressing dissent.