In the circles I am moving around in, the theories seem to be the similar to the last post I made on this topic: $$$.
The Iraqi people I work with are mostly governmental employees, many of them officers. They are ready for "us" to leave, but want the money to keep flowing in. They want to take charge of their country and want to have things run their way again.
When we pulled our bases out of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, the initial reaction of the people was favorable. They wanted us gone. Soon thereafter, they started to realize how much money the US government and the US service members pumped into the local economy and then they started wanting that income back.
We spend quite a bit of money hiring Iraqi's as contractors to construct buildings and make infrastructural improvements while we provide security for these improvements. Both the money for these contracts and the security will go away when we leave and the people I work with all seem to realize that.
On the American side of the coin, it is going to be expensive in resources and time to get all of the Americans, over 100,000, back to the states. Now I realize that it costs quite a bit to keep us here and pulling us out will save some of those resources, but the bottom line is that we are still here largely because of money.
Doing things right the first time normally costs less than doing them several times. Paying now to only conduct Operation Iraqi Freedom once WILL cost less than paying to re-deploy the military generation after generation after generation.
This would have been a good philosophy to have employed back in the early 90's when we were here during the first President Bush's tenure. Had the military my father was in been permitted to finish the job, the military I am in probably would not have had to come back out here in the 2000's.
Don't get me wrong, I am not upset about that. It is water under the bridge and there is nothing I can do to change it, but I can recommend that we make it right for the military of my children's age. We are still here for the sake of their national treasure and their money.
Finally, the oil in this region costs money and the stability of that resource is critical. It is critical for the oil in Iran to be controlled by a stable regime as well, but that is another blog for another day.
We need to still be here to stabilize the Iraqi government to a point that they can fairly distribute the oil they control. We need to pay a fair price for a fair commodity, but that is not possible if there is no one controlling its distribution and maintaining order.
Nigeria is in the situation now where they cannot control the distribution of their oil. Bandits and gangs of thugs are raiding oil rigs and stealing oil by the tens of thousands of barrels a week and the Nigerian government has not been able to stop them.
In Sudan, 9 Chinese oil workers (yet another blogable topic for another day) have been kidnapped by rebels wanting to influence the oil distribution for a state that has not been able to protect it.
Nigeria's/Sudan's national well-being, to include the well-being of the rebels, could improve if they would stop all this non-sense and start allowing the oil workers to do their jobs. Iraq is in the same boat. It needs to have the strength in its security apparatus to control its oil distribution.
This disruption in oil distribution is bad for the global economy as well as the US economy and impacts more than just the prices at the pump. It impacts the imports and exports of food commodity.
Farmers in America or India or Brazil or... will not be able to sell their goods to the same consumers they were able to before if there are fuel problems that cause costs to marginalize profits.
Bottom Line: We are still in Iraq largely due to monitary reasons.
More will surely follow!!!
Semper Fi,
m
No comments:
Post a Comment