Stop Whining And Get To Work

OpinionEditorials.com ^ | May 12, 2003 | Frank Salvato

[The Rant]

Reports of garbage not being picked up and police officers refusing to go to work for fear of running into thugs are rampant in Iraq these days along with the incessant reports of Iraqi protesters railing against the United States and the coalition forces for not having a fully functioning government and public services established just weeks after the most successful military campaign in the history of the world. So, what needs to be said about this? How about shut the hell up and get your butts back to work!

There are a few things that the Iraqi people have to get straight and the first thing is that although the coalition went over there and freed them of the oppressive regime that was installed their by their lack of vision 23 years ago, at the expense of many a human life I might add, it is still their obligation to make their country livable, not ours. No one is stopping them from returning to work, rather they are encouraging it. Coalition stabilization forces are actively courting those who worked in both the public and private sectors to return to their normal duties offering them more pay then they ever were making before. But it seems that they would rather gather in the streets under the direction of their power-hungry, fanatical religious leaders and whine and complain about things that they actually have control over than take advantage of the opportunities that their newly presented freedom now affords them.

The question here is not if the services are in working order or if the coalition forces are working hard enough to restore order and utilities to the people of Iraq, the question is why are the Iraqis so amazingly helpless? One thought is that they do not know any better for their 23 years of oppression under a murderous regime; that they have forgotten the golden years of prosperity before Saddam Hussein came to power. This is likely not the case however. Another thought, and the one that I profess to, is that they are not helpless at all but that they are apathetic and manipulative, taking advantage of the situation so as to extract all of the rebuilding efforts, both monetarily and physically, from the international community. It would, of course, be easier to declare that the US and the coalition stabilization forces have failed and to fall back into the status quo of being a nation whose government is run by a group of backward thinking religious zealots rather than to work hard at advancing their society and investing personally in their future as a country. How else can you explain a police officer that refuses to go to work because there are criminals afoot?

It is time for the Iraqis, the working class and regular everyday Iraqis, to get off of their rear-ends, cease their whining, protesting and finger pointing and get back to work. They need to take control of their lives and start being productive instead of blindly following the disgruntled, the scheming and the power-driven. Those who were policemen and who have expressed a desire to remain so should get out there and combat the thugs that they are currently running from, either that or not expect to be police officers in the new Iraq. Those who were garbage collectors should pick up garbage. Those who worked in the market places should open their shops. Those who worked at power plants, water plants and oil refineries should return to work and start producing these products once again.

Will paychecks be normal? Probably not, but life will start returning to normal once the “normal” returns to life and then the paychecks will start to come in at regular intervals and in the customary manner if not to a level more desirable than before.

"But what about food? They won't be able to acquire food if they don't get paid!” some will say. Bovine feces! They are getting free food from all over the world in the form of humanitarian aid and at the time when the “normal” returns to their lives the “normal” will return to the matter of food as well in the form of plentiful local food markets. It should be their purpose and their obligation to get their country back on its feet without relying completely on the generosity of others in return for the food and, quite frankly, their freedom. They owe the world that much.

The world community, perhaps with the exception of France and Russia, is happy that they are liberated and that the world is free of a murderous tyrant who proved his capabilities when he used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. We are happy that they will no doubt land on their feet with the third largest oil supply in the world so that they can run roughshod over our oil prices in the not too distant future. So enough protesting, enough whining and enough of being led around by the noses by their egotistical, self-absorbed, power-hungry mullahs, the rank and file Iraqis have to get off their butts, get back to work and take some responsibility for themselves, their country and their people. They owe it to those who died to give them the freedom to do so. They owe it to themselves. They owe it to the world.

[RonF]

Part of the problem here is that for just about everyone's entire lifetime in Iraq, you didn't make move one without being told to do so, or else you'd get whacked. So now asking them to do just that goes against everyone's grain. They don't know how to be self-directed.

[RonF]

Another complicating issue is that the various water works, generating stations, etc. were looted of essential equipment. These workers should report -- who better to repair these facilities? -- but expect that it's going to take some time and effort before those facilities become productive again.

[Chirodoc]

Amen to that. I think their lethargy exposes the underlying
flaw of the Democraps way. The more dependent you make someone on the state for goods and services, the less able they are to fend for themselves, no matter whether its provided by a dictator, the UN, or a socialist state.

"What, we've got to produce and buy our own food? How do you do that?"

[Blood of Tyrants]

Don't let this opinion piece affect you too much. The protesters are in the tiny, tiny minority and quite a few people have already gone back to work, what little there is.

[dark_lord]

I think that there were the following fundamental errors made by the planners for the post-Iraq period. Those errors were:

(1) They assumed they would only need a relatively small military occupying force. This was a major mistake -- when the US occupied Germany and Japan it was not done with so few troops. This shows that while we can fight with a lean force structure, when it comes to suppressing looters and criminals and getting the infrastructure rebuilt we need bodies on the ground -- lots of bodies.

(2) There may have been (it appears) a mistaken assumption that once we "liberated" the Iraqis, they would step forward and handle a lot of this themselves. The error was in miscalculating the impact of 30 years of a totalitarian state on people's psychologies. These people have been trained since birth that if they make independent decisions they will be picked up and beaten, tortured, or killed. That psychology does not change overnight. It is going to take YEARS to for these people to get their heads oriented correctly.

(3) There was a serious underestimation of the results of not cracking down on the looting. The concept that "hey, they are just blowing off steam and liberating what was stolen from them for years by the Baathists" was valid for a few days. But there are organized criminal gangs looting power generators and other vital infrastructure equipment. Quite possibly many of these gangs are pure criminals, but others are Fedayeen and Islamofacists who are destroying the infrastructure deliberately to get people pissed of at the American occupiers. It does no good to say that the Iraqi people should be pissed off at the looters -- they are! But they are also pissed at the Americans for not shooting the looters.

There needs to be some serious attention to this or things are really going to unravel -- the Islamofacists are going to move in with mullahs popping up like dandylions on spring lawns!

[alloysteel]

There is an enormous amount of work to be done, rebuilding a viable nation out of some pretty disparate elements, and nobody to provide direction and guidance. A small cadre of reactionaries, who do NOT want the possibility of a viable representative government, are actively striving to sabotage the new system before it is fully formed and begun functioning. I do not fault Jay Garner one bit for looking at the prospects, saying he wanted none of headaches this size, and taking the first plane out.

But this is the sort of opportunity that makes reputations and builds historic precedents in governance. Japan, in September 1945, was even more prostate than Iraq, when our viceroy, General Douglas MacArthur, simply dictated a constitution for the country. And enforced it.

[Blood of Tyrants]

General Douglas MacArthur, simply dictated a constitution for the country. And enforced it.

Iraq needs some heavy input into their new Constitution and some lessons into the reason constitutions are written.