Ex-Envoy Criticizes U.S. Effort in Iraq

[ze_dscherman]

WASHINGTON - James Dobbins, a former State Department official involved in five of six nation-building exercises over the past 11 years, says the United States should be doing better in Iraq (news - web sites) after all this experience.

SNIP

In Bosnia, he says, the ratio of security forces to the population was 18 soldiers for each 1,000 inhabitants. In Kosovo, it was 20 per thousand. In Iraq, it is only seven.

SNIP

Dobbins says American patience in Iraq is essential, claiming that "no nation-building operation has succeeded in less than seven years."

SNIP

Dobbins believes the United States has to begin taking nation building seriously because these operations probably will be a permanent fixture of U.S. foreign policy.
He says the problem is systemic because neither the State nor Defense departments regards nation building as a part of its central purpose.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=8&u=/ap/20030716/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_postwar

[teryang]

1. It's like the car manufacturer or drug manufacturer

...with a known deadly defect in their product. They can fix it but it will cost billions of dollars. In fact it will be so expensive to fix the defects that the profit margin will be completely lost. The bottom line will be affected so negatively that the shareholders might vote them out of corporate control. What to do? The product is killing and injuring a known but finite number of people every day.

Conduct a PR campaign to disguise and dissimulate. Try to disprove that there is anything wrong with the product. Attribute all criticism to hysterics and the poorly informed. All adverse effects of the product are the result of "other causes" and cannot be attributed to the product. Meanwhile collect the revenues streaming from the current marketing campaign as long as possible. Every day the product stays on the market means continued millions in corporate pockets. Sustaining the casualties is cheaper than paying the cost of correcting the defect or removing the profitable product from the market.