Iraq war will haunt west - Emma Sky

[Steve the Planner]

Slap:

Right. The pathways are there but they never meet in the operational plan.

The one thing myself and other keep coming to is: How to engage the actual people that are the focus of all of this.

As a civilian planner, the first thing you learn in a well-implemented community engagement process is that planners define the issues and rough-out options and CHOICES.

Then you go to the intended audience who invariably adds either nuances you missed or wholesale changes (different problem definitions, different solutions), after which, you start again.

This nasty business of community engagement---confounded in blood conflict (instead of just general community conflicts)---is just DAMNED hard, yet will never stick from some ferner telling locals what to do.

We cannot be both the occupier and fill the shoes of the occupied. If they have problems, they must find solutions to them.

Rule 101 in disaster relief---help where you can, then engage the community to rebuild itself. It can not work any other way.

Steve

[slapout9]

We cannot be both the occupier and fill the shoes of the occupied. If they have problems, they must find solutions to them.

That is exactly what the Air Force believes or at they used to. I have a copy of a letter to the editor of our local paper from just after the overthrow of Sadam where Colonel Warden tried to warn whoever would listen what would happen if we disbanded the Iraqi military and implemented some kind of de-bathistazation(spelling?) program. Pretty much fell on deaf ears.