In For the Long Haul

[goesh]

I've wondered from the get-go why manual labor jobs weren't created, namely hauling rubble and garbage the old fashioned way by hand and wheel barrow, loading it onto trucks, hauling it out in the desert and unloading it by hand, paying a good cash wage at the end of each day or week. Thousands of young men could be employed doing something constructive and earning a living for their families. In our Great Depression, the CCCs and WPA employed thousands of idle young men, giving them a purpose and income in life. My Dad was in the CCCs. The man in charge of the camp where my Dad was at was a US Army Captain. I'd like to see a small CAP somewhere where the unit oversees such a project - say 25 trucks in good shape to employ 125 men, and the CAP unit handles the whole thing, the hiring and firing and paying, the logistics, supervision, just to see how it would unfold and perhaps it could make a slight difference, maybe some better Intel could be generated in such a way, better public relations, that sort of thing. I'd hire crews, make them take an oath on the Quaran that they would work a full 8 hrs with time off for the noon meal and afternoon prayers, provide a water cooler, some MREs and a 1st aid kit for each truck, turn them loose, pay them at the end of each day and see how it goes. Our troops are supposed to be killers one day and social workers the next so they may as well try something like this too.

[Jones_RE]

In the early days there were no cap units. Line troopers didn't speak Arabic, and could maybe warn people to put their hands in the air. Line commanders didn't have access to money, either, or even trucks. And I'm sure no one told them that this stuff was supposed to be their problem.

It might still do some good to try something like that these days, but it would have to be in a safer area. Just imagine the media flap if fifty young men and the five or six Americans assigned to protect them all turn up murdered in a river somewhere. We'd look weak and incompetent to the Iraqis and worse than foolish back home. They should probably do it anyway - folk with real jobs are less likely to be militia recruits and folk who get paychecks from nice Americans that don't scream at them are more likely to be decent HUNINT sources.

[120mm]

We were also trying to develop Iraqi contractors. For that reason, plus incompetence at the G.O. level, we kept nearly 2 battalions of construction engineers sitting on their asses for a year in LSA Anaconda.

[Anlaochfhile]

I've wondered from the get-go why manual labor jobs weren't created, namely hauling rubble and garbage the old fashioned way by hand and wheel barrow, loading it onto trucks, hauling it out in the desert and unloading it by hand, paying a good cash wage at the end of each day or week. Thousands of young men could be employed doing something constructive and earning a living for their families.

That actually did happen in many instances, although not the CAP system as you describe. In my own AO (NW Baghdad - Ghazaliyah, Al Mansour area) there were many projects that revolved around trash and rubble removal, irrigation ditch clearing, etc., where the provisions of the contracts (yes, Iraqi contractors) were to use manual labor - for the express purpose of drawing out the work and keeping people employed. Even with that, you can only do so much.

And with a lack of security, you can do even less.