Okay...

I'm trying to form a rebuttal to a post on LJ, and here's what I've got so far.

The italicized sections are what I'm responding to. Let me know what you think or what I've got wrong. I'm about to head to bed, and I'm wanting to re-read this later to make sure that I'm not freaking out.

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I said this over four years ago and I'll say it again. If we want to "win" the "war on terror", we start recruiting the same way the Taliban and Al-Quaida did in the beginning. And how was that? We feed people. We educate people. We promise them brighter futures. We keep the lights on. We keep the malls and the roadways safe. We focus on, spend our money on, use our energies on building a region with opportunity and hope, in the context of respect for Muslim traditions and institutions.

I think, and I may be wrong, that you're confusting Hammas with both the Taliban and al-Quaida. From wikipedia:

"Al-Qaeda (Arabic: القاعدة‎ ​, transliterated: al-Qā‘idah; "the foundation" or "the base") is an international Sunni Islamic fundamentalist paramilitary organization and campaign comprising independent and collaborative cells that all profess the same cause of reducing outside influence upon Islamic affairs. Al-Qaeda itself is classified by the United States, European Union, United Nations, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and various other nations, as an international terrorist organization. Although al-Qaeda is philosophically heterogeneous in context of Sunni Islam, most prominent members of the movement are considered to have Salafi beliefs.

Sources differ on the origin of the name. Robin Cook, the late British member of Parliament and former foreign secretary, wrote in 2005 that "Al-Qaida, literally 'the database', was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians." [1] Supporting this, Dr. Saad Al-Fagih, a surgeon at Peshawar (where the recruiting happened) explained that creation of the computer database (Al-Qaeda) was necessary to fix problems associated with a lack of documentation about the fighters who were recruited. [2] Some others have said that the name means simply the base as well as claiming that the organization chose its own name.[3][4]

The origins of al-Qaeda can be traced to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when a cadre of non-Afghani, Arab Muslim fighters joined the largely United States and Pakistan-funded Afghan mujāhidīn anti-Russian resistance movement (a guerrilla war against Soviet occupation forces and the Soviet-backed Afghan government). Osama bin Laden, a member of a prominent Saudi Arabian business family, led an informal grouping which became a leading fundraiser and recruitment agency for the Afghan cause in Muslim countries; it channelled Islamic fighters to the conflict, distributed money and provided logistical skills and resources to both fighting forces and Afghan refugees."

When we offer Muslim children education in a school paid for by the US, we do not indoctrinate the children in the ideals of Western democracy. We teach. Five times a day, the children will do obeisance as their religion commands. The history of the great acheivements of the people of the Middle East will be front and center. And so will one of the greatest of those acheivements....Algebra.

Um. How do you expect them to accept the idea of a bicameral legislature when you're not going to teach them the ideas of Western democracy from the cradle? The ONLY reason we seem to think that our government should function the way it does is because we're indoctrinated, from babyhood, that this is the way it should be. The idea of a representative government is democracy, plain and simple, and it's NOT a normal system of government in the ME. The normal form of government is dictated by who has the biggest stick, and when you have the biggest stick, you get to beat up on the last guy who had the biggest stick, because he beat you up. It just goes around and around and around and around.

We want the people to see "US soldier" and think "home builder" not "killer of innocents".

Right. When I left, they saw us as "morons" and "suckers." They saw us as too stupid to actually read the contracts we signed with the local contractors, and too damn scared to enforce them. I watched an Iraqi contractor try and tell one of the CA NCOs that the contract the former CA NCO signed wasn't really the right one. He was just pissed because SFC Rauschuber wouldn't pay him the second half of the monies owed on the contract until the generator performed in 50 C weather, just like the contract SPECIFIED.

They think we STUPID, hon. Not misguided, not duplicitous, just dumber than dirt and too damned stupid to realize that.

All people accused of terrorism by the US need to be tried under US law if they are captured or brought to US jurisdiction. No more "Abu-Ghraib", and no new Haditha. Give the men in Guantanamo some dignity and a trial. Stop with the empty war mongering rhetoric.

Okay.

Does this mean the troops will leave immediately? Absolutely not. What did your mama tell you about when you spilled ice cream on the floor? You clean your own mess, young lady! Why aren't more US dollars being poured into finding work for the 30% of Iraqi citizens who are unemployed, with the absolutely tremendous amount of building going on there? We've been there for three years. The time for "they're not educated enough to work on our road crews" is over.

No, they're not too uneducated. They might have to work alongside a Sunni or a Shia, or someone whose grandfather threw at rock at someone else's grandfather who then threw a rock at someone else. What seems like ancient history to us is last week to them. Tribal societies do not forgive or forget and they're still very very very tribal.

You also haven't ever actually tried to get an Iraqi to get something done on a timetable. It's always tomorrow, inshallah. You cannot expect an Iraqi to get to a meeting on time, you cannot expect them to meet a deadline and if you do, you're not respecting the culture.

Here where I live, homeless guys get jobs rehabbing homes and building streets and driving trucks and doing cleanup. Are you saying that the average addicted, ex con, often chronically ill homeless guy is more competent than a young, strong Iraqi man who got his education under Saddam Hussein?

No, but his work ethic is, even when atrophied by drugs and illness, at least something that we recognize. He does at least understand the concept of showing up to work at a specified time, and staying for the specified amount of time. He understands that if his job is to produce 65 widgets in one day, then he needs to make 65 widgets. There is no "I'll make the widgets if it is God's will that I make the widgets. If it is God's will that I wander off to the coffee shop, I will do that instead."

Why does Halliburton get all the money? Pay local labor good wages to rebuild, and you'd be amazed how quickly sectarian violence and anti-US sentiment would begin to fade.

You do realize that 99% of the labor used to rebuild Iraqi shit IS Iraqi, right? The contracts are for local Iraqi companies, the work is with local Iraqis hired in the local neighborhoods and the equipment, when possible, is Iraqi. As for why Haliburton gets the money? If you're talking about the dining halls and what not on the camps and FOBs, it's because they understand the idea of health codes and the ideas of working with standards that Iraq hasn't ever adopted. You don't want to know what their slaughtering grounds looked like or what the local butcher shops looked like. And no, it wasn't becuase of the lack of power or the lack of supplies. It's because that's the way it's always been. Again, read the bit above about deadlines and timetables and trying to get something done in a reasonably quick fashion. It's also because we've learned the hard way that if you let Iraqis have unrestricted access to the camps and the FOBs, they take that information back to their little terrorist buddies and then, they get to kill us more quickly and more easily.

We'll also mention that 99% of the folx watching shit get blown up again are Iraqi too. They might not be the ones blowing the new power plants up, but they're certainly not doing *ANYTHING* to stop it.

How bout this? Conceptualize Iraq as a confederation of (at least) three states, one primarily Kurdish, one primarily Sunni, and one primarily Shiite. Travel is unrestricted or minimally restricted between the states. All three states are expected to provide support for the oil fields which (by geography) will necessarily be located in only one of the three states. Support means personnel, security, infrastructure, etc. In exchange, the oil revenue is proportionally divided among the populations of the three states by a federal body with a bicameral legislature that cuts the gordian knot of fair representation in a similar way as the US founding fathers did.

But we're not supposed to indoctrinate the culture into Western democracy? How do you think this is going to work otherwise?

A certain percentage of that oil revenue is earmarked for education and social infrastructure. Another percentage is earmarked for developing and marketing alternative energy resources (if you need to ask why, you haven't stuck a dipstick in the oil fields lately). The rest of the oil revenue is discretionary. Sunnis police Sunnis, Shiites police Shiites, Kurds police Kurds. And holy sites revered by any of the three sects are maintained by those aforementioned oil fields.

This will NEVER work. Each of them will be sure that they should get more money, and they'll just wander down to the local opposition headquarters and kill the other guys. We were still tyring to convince the journalists that the way to put their competition out of business was to be better than they were, not to kill them. I'm not kidding or being hyperbolic here. I listened to my CO try to tell the journalists that free speech was part of a free society, and they had to counter stories they didn't like with other stories, NOT by blowing up the other newspaper officers or the printers.

And on the homefront? Victory gardens. Actual sacrifices. Government sponsered trade ins of SUVs for fuel efficient cars.

I like my truck thank you, and I'll pay for the extra gas I use. When they make a truck that gets better gas mileage, but will still let me haul my camping stuff and a horse trailer, I'm there. Until then, it's a free country, and that includes people making choices I don't agree with. If my parents have to accept the fact that gay marriage isn't going to be the downfall of western society as we know it, then I'm pretty that my SUV won't be either.

Meatless and wheatless and sweetless days. And for what? To ensure long term peace while balancing the budget and contributing to the outcome. Americans are not engaged in this war, and they're not engaged because it's an Effing stupid war. That could change, if our government had a little sense and forethought.

It's funny, but it's only sense and forethought when the government is doing what we think it ought to be doing. Otherwise, it's waste and horror. And that's on both sides of the political aisle.