A $7 Billion Solution for Iraq

Problems:

1) U.S. soldiers being killed in Iraq at a rate of several per day.
2) When U.S. soldiers kill Iraqi civilians, even if the U.S. soldiers are trying as hard as possible not to, it involves foreigners killing Iraqi civilians.
3) There is a lot of unemployment in Iraq.
4) It's particularly difficult for police and the military in Iraq, since they know they or their families can be targeted. This would be less true if their were many more families of police and military (i.e., there is strength in numbers).

Solution:

The U.S. government should pay 500,000 Iraqi volunteers (men and women) an average of $6000 per year, for the next 2 years, to serve as a temporary military force. U.S. commanders and officers should serve as the senior officer core (say, lieutenant colonel and above). Most or all of the U.S. military below that grade should be sent back home to the U.S. The U.S. military would also stay to provide air support/surveillance.

The cost of this would only be $3 billion per year, or $6 billion total. An additional $1 billion would be available for equipment and for a death benefits fund (say, $15,000 each) for soldiers killed in action.

This solution provides lots of money for individual Iraqi citizens (approximately 1 out of every 50 Iraqis would be in the military). It will dramatically reduce the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq (I'd estimate the reduction to be 80+%). It will ensure that Iraqis are fighting insurgents (aka, terrorists). It will get around the problem of finding senior military officers/commanders who are Iraqis (these would likely be people who already served in the Iraqi military under Saddam Hussein's regime, and therefore could be problematic in terms of commitment to a free and democratic Iraq).

I'm open to comments on this plan. I'd especially like to hear from Iraqis, and from U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Comments

[John Rogers]

Aren't we doing that already? The difficulty - as I see it - is training them to be competent.

[Mark Bahner]

"Aren't we doing that already?"

No, I don't think we are. I think there have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 120,000 total Iraqi Defense Force AND police. I'm talking about 4 times that many people.

Further, I don't think they are paid by the U.S. government. And I don't think they are paid (by the Iraqi interim government) anywhere near the level I'm talking about. I doubt they even get 1/2 of what I'm talking about.

"The difficulty - as I see it - is training them to be competent."

That's difficult. But paying them them a whole lot of money helps to draw top quality people. And building a huge force I think would actually lessen the number of battles they'd have to fight.

I think it would make a big difference if, for example, 100,000 Iraqi troops were deployed to Fallujah, versus maybe 10,000 U.S. marines to that same city.

Given that Fallujah is a city of about 300,000 people, I think it would make a big difference if there was one Iraqi soldier for every 3 people, versus 1 U.S. soldier for every 30 people.

[Robert Stuckey]

Brilliant. ( That's why it will never get done, but that's another issue! :)

[Mark Bahner]

Hi Robert,

You write, "Brilliant. ( That's why it will never get done, but that's another issue! :)"

My idea in this regard has evolved to larger and larger sums. (Typical government mentally, but there you are!)

Right now, I'd say more like paying 2 MILLION Iraqis an average of $5000 a year for 2-3 more years. So we'd be talking about more like $20-30 billion.

Also, as part of that payment, I would have the U.S. government demand that the Iraqis change their constitution to distribute a very large percentage of oil revenue (e.g. 80 percent) equally to every single adult Iraqi.

That idea about distributing oil revenues directly to Iraqi citizens is one of the changes I recommended for the Iraqi constitution (they implemented none of my recommendations, as far as I know):

http://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2005/08/what_should_be_.html

Thanks for the kind words (if you happen to see Dubyah, please suggest my plan...feel free to take credit ;-))

Mark