JimfromPennsylvania

Not only is the violence in Baghdad from the Mahdi Army something the U.S. and the Iraq governments want to stop for humanity reasons but it is a bad public relations problem. The Mahdi Army firing missiles and mortars into the Green Zone, the center of the Iraq government, symbolizes a lack of control and failure on the Iraq and U.S. governments part to succeed in creating a country of Iraq. To counter this Mahdi Army threat the Iraq and U.S. governments should turn up the heat on the Mahdi army operating in Baghdad.

The Iraq and U.S. government should get together and announce that if within thirty days the Mahdi Army in Baghdad doesn’t cease fire, turn in their heavy weapons and permanently disband, the joint governments are going to do the following. In all areas of Baghdad where the Mahdi Army operates especially around the Green Zone and in Sadr City, they are going to raze all structures above three stories in these areas, now these structures act as hideouts and cover for Mahdi army members to move around. Demolish these high buildings and truck away the rubble, leave only open space so Iraqi and U.S. soldiers can more readily see these militants and kill them before they kill others. Further, the joint Governments should build five plus story high concrete steel reinforced (to withstand the militants weaponry) surveillance towers throughout these militant areas to maintain continual surveillance for militants in these areas. They should man these towers with snipers and as the militants come into view the snipers should take them out; as we know from our long history of dealing with Iraqi militants they don’t like snipers. To be prudent in the use of resources the surveillance towers would be spaced at a much larger distance than a sniper rifle can shoot because binoculers have a longer range and where militants are spotted and beyond sniper range, unmanned planes or Apache helicopters could be used to take out the militants.

In these militant areas of Baghdad, the Iraqi government should put a building moratorium on all new residential structures and consistent with the prior policy all structures over two stories. The Iraq government’s strategy in these violent areas of Baghdad should be to try to get civilians to resettle out of these areas because the lesser number of people living in these violent sections of the city the easier it will be to identify and get rid of the militants operating there, lesser probability of innocent civilians being hurt in the fight against these militants and lesser number of people for the militants to draw upon as recruits and supporters. The Iraq government should not let these displaced civilians fend for themselves; rather, the Iraq government should build new communities for these displaced civilians near Baghdad and either give them the newly built homes or sell them to them at very advantageous prices – the Iraq government has the money from oil sales. Along these same lines one sometimes sees on TV when shown violent areas of Baghdad, structures that look like shacks and other structures that connote squalor and are not real inhabitable which Iraqi civilians live in; the Iraqi government should have knocked down all these impoverished structures and offer the civilians living in these structures homes in the new communities. All these squalored and impoverished structures just make it more difficult for Iraqi and U.S. forces responsible for security to identify, kill or capture militants operating in these areas of the city.

Taking these steps will move Iraq civilians in these violent areas of the city to turn against the Mahdi Army in their area because all the government’s negative intervention the activities of the Mahdi Army will bring. To this same end hopefully it will move the civilians in these areas to take a very careful look at this Muqtada al Sadr leader of the Mahdi army and also hopefully to see the truth about him that he does not have one redeeming quality as a leader outside of his blood line, he doesn’t have a high degree of intelligence, he doesn’t have a high degree of virtue, nor does he have a high degree of character; the Iraqi people that follow Muqtada al Sadr are acting like fools in their allegiance to him as a leader. Muqtada is no leader and there is a lot of their fellow countrymen and women and people of good will around the world that hope they come to their senses on this point before it is too late!