Random thought on Iraq.

[thejester525]

The US did not need to shoulder Iraq on its own. Yes, we are powerful, yes we probably have the capacity to destroy many countries unilaterally, but we do not have the resources to maintain one the size of Iraq. The UN should have been involved from the beggining. One of the primary reasons the UN did not support the US in its Iraq invasion was not just a skepticism of it's WMD's, but rather the selfishness of America in keeping post-occupation reconstruction contracts mostly with American companies. The Middle East market is not very well exploited by the west (it's hard to penetrate an area with so many security problems), and in the perfect outcome, a lot of money could be made by investments in a stable Iraq. Well the US was not willing to budge on those contracts, so other UN countries vetoed the US request to multilaterally invade. The problem with this is that, while it kept any potential profits from the venture purely American, it severely limited the ability of the forces taking Iraq to set up the stability required for those investments to bear fruit. It was a win all lose all gamble; and most of the data suggested America would lose all. But I guess the potential profits were too alluring, and America went forth. There was politics behind this as well, don't get me wrong, but I feel that this business strain of thought was equally strong in defining the details of the operation. The outcome is, there is little to no stability in Iraq, US companies can't even dream of investing in such a place, and the Iraqis are no better off for it (in fact, most are much worse off). The dumbest part of it all is the US could have admitted this mistake years ago, even after the invasion. When they realized what the post-occupation of Iraq was going to look like, they could have gone to the UN, grovelled and gotten the help everyone needs. I guess we were too proud, or more likely, too cocky.

Well anyway, not much to do about it now. Or is there? Stay tuned for an inspired post on how to fix the world.