The other Michael, Michael Totten, reports from Baghdad:

“Do they ever get pissed off when you search them?” I said.

“Not very often,” he said. “They understand we’re trying to protect them.”

“This is not what I expected in Baghdad,” I said.

“Most of what we’re doing doesn’t get reported in the media,” he said. “We’re not fighting a war here anymore, not in this area. We’ve moved way beyond that stage. We built a soccer field for the kids, bought all kinds of equipment, bought them school books and even chalk. Soon we’re installing 1,500 solar street lamps so they have light at night and can take some of the load off the power grid. The media only covers the gruesome stuff. We go to the sheiks and say hey man, what kind of projects do you want in this area? They give us a list and we submit the paperwork. When the projects get approved, we give them the money and help them buy stuff.”

[Update a couple hours later]

Another dispatch from Baqubah by Michael Yon.

The idea is to get the Iraqis to run their own cities but most of the old leaders are gone, and the new ones are like throwing babies to cow udders. Many just don’t know what to do, and in any case, most of them have no natural instinct for it. So our soldiers are mentoring Iraqi civil leaders, which is a huge education for me because I get to sit in on the meetings. The American leaders tell me what they are up to, which amounts for free Ph.D. level instruction in situ: just have to be willing to be shot at. (The education a writer can get here is unbelievable.) Meeting after meeting—after embeds in Nineveh, Anbar, Baghdad and Diyala—I have seen how American officers tend to have a hidden skill-set. Collectively, American military leaders seem to somehow intuitively know how to run the mechanics of a city. Watch video of LTC Johnson in action at a meeting with Iraqi Army officials to plan for the delivery and distribution of diesel fuel, another commodity formerly under al Qaeda control.

I have wondered now for two years why is it that American military leaders somehow seem to naturally know what it takes to run a city, while many of the local leaders seem clueless. Over time, a possible answer occurred, and that nudge might be due to how the person who runs each American base is referred to as the “Mayor.” A commander’s first job is to take care of his or her forces. Our military is, in a sense its own little country, with city-states spread out all around the world. Each base is like a little city-state. The military commander must understand how the water, electricity, sewerage, food distribution, police, courts, prisons, hospitals, fire, schools, airports, ports, trash control, vector control, communications, fuel, fiscal budgeting, fire, for his “city” all work. They have “embassies” all over the world and must deal diplomatically with local officials in Korea, Germany, Japan and many dozens of other nations. The U.S. military even has its own space program, which few countries have.
In short, our military is a reasonable microcosm of the United States – sans the very important business aspect which actually produces the wealth the military depends on. The requisite skill-set to run a serious war campaign involves a subset of skills that include diplomacy and civil administration.

We live far better on base here in Baqubah than many people who are living downtown (though there are some very nice homes), and it’s not all about money. Not at all and not in the least. When Americans move into Iraqi buildings, the buildings start improving from the first day. And then, the buildings near the buildings start to improve. It’s not about the money, but the mindset. The Greatest Generation called it “the can-do mentality.” It’s a wealth measured not only in dollars, but also in knowledge. The burning curiosity that launched the Hubble, flows from that mentality, and so does the revenue stream of taxpayer dollars that funded it. Iraq is very rich in resources, but philosophically it is impoverished. The truest separation between cultures is in the collective dreams of their people.

If teaching people to become self sufficient is "socialism" (per the first comment below), then bring it on, for now.

And I'm sure that Harry Reid is very disappointed.

We go to the sheiks and say hey man, what kind of projects do you want in this area? They give us a list and we submit the paperwork. When the projects get approved, we give them the money and help them buy stuff.

Don't you love socialism? Clearly we now have the proof that it works and everyone is happy including Michael Yon. And even Rand is cheering! I love it when conservatives cheer the welfare state.

Now we need to try it here. Possibly in 2008?

I love it when conservatives cheer the welfare state.

I'm not a conservative. And I'm cheering the fact that there is some progress on the ground, not that they've established a modern liberal democracy. They clearly have a long way to go, but when the focus is on infrastructure, rather than whether or not they're going to be blown up today, it's a better place to be, and one that the MSM and Dems don't want you to know about.

Oh, and putting up street lights is socialism?

Do they have private street lights where you live, T'n'T?

In short, our military is a reasonable microcosm of the United States – sans the very important business aspect which actually produces the wealth the military depends on.

The irony abounds. He should have added, sans massive variation in income levels, sans the lack of universal health care, sans the lack of free and nearly uniform housing. Hmm, perhaps the US military is the most socialist of all. But I digress.

More to the point, when the streetlights are being paid for with our tax money, we are not simply teaching people to be self sufficient . We are paying for it too. Taking from the rich etc., you know, bad stuff.

Once they are self sufficient (a huge IF by the way) will they then reconcile with their fellow Shia or Sunni or Kurd? THAT is the real question.

And how does a perceived as Christian nation referred to by the average Iraqi as The Jews reconcile the fissures in Islam? More American taxpayer funded projects going to do that? Isn't this after all what we need to do, short of partition to solve the problem?

Or should we simply not think that far , and cheer every solar powered streetlight while booing the Dementor Harry Reid?

Was feeding Katrina victims socialism? Was providing them shelter and restoring their broken infrastructure socialism? Is sending aid to victims of an earthquake in the Philippines socialism? Is aid to starving children in Africa socialism?

Once they are self sufficient (a huge IF by the way) will they then reconcile with their fellow Shia or Sunni or Kurd? THAT is the real question.

So, underneath this criticism, you're saying what? That this is all a waste of time and we should just leave, since they're too stupid to get over their own disagreements and prosper?

Are you really implying that unless America can "fix" Islam, everything is doomed to fail? Is mere progress insufficient unless perfection can be guaranteed?

(And are you really arguing, seriously, against some straw-man "conservative" who believes in no public services at all, or that when rebuilding a nation for reasons of national security it's wrong to spend money to do the job?

I think you'll find that the people who are for not having street-lights or other public services (but for them being provided solely by private entities who presumably charge for it directly), or who are against spending tax dollars on such projects in principle, in any circumstance are a subset of libertarians.

Not conservatives in general, who typically endorse the traditional arrangements of local government, like provision of streetlights and other infrastructure. The fact that someone is taxed and others (in addition to the taxee, either directly via having streetlights or indirectly via a more amenable geopolitical situation) does not suffice to make it Damnable Socialism in mainstream Conservative thought - Conservatives aren't anarchists.

[Paleocons like Buchanan don't want to be there at all, but their argument against it is 1) isolationist, not "it's socialism!" and 2) not representative of "conservatives" as a whole anyway.])

I mean, if you want to be taken seriously and not just filed under "troll" you might want to pay some attention to those points. If you don't care, carry on.

Don't you love socialism?

Toast, you git, don't you know the difference between socialism and charity? If my neighbor's house burns down and I voluntarily help to rebuild it -- hopefully you can see the analogy to Iraq -- that isn't socialism, that's charity.

Now if the government forceably extracts rent from me and my neighbor, with the promise that it will rebuild either house if they burn down -- that's socialism. The equivalent on the world stage would be a world government that levies taxes on everybody, including Americans, and would rebuild or improve Iraq with the money, according to some bureaucrat's plan, and giving you zero say in whether and how the job was done.

So don't you love living in a non-socialist world, where there's actually a nonzero chance that your opposition to the rebuilding of Iraq might be given attention, since you (or rather your nation) are voluntarily paying for it, and could stop anytime Congress decides to call a halt? You have (or rather your country has) influence precisely and only because participation in this project is voluntary. In the socialist worker's paradise, the fate of the Iraqis -- and the fate of your wallet, and the fate of conscripts in the military -- would be in a UN bureaucrat's hands.

Furthermore, here you are going on about how the Iraqis ought to learn to be on their own. You do realize, I hope, that under a socialist world order they would never have to "be on their own," right? "The troops" (in this case some kind of international force or corps of World Department of Social Services agents) would never leave -- because socialism is about a government that never leaves you to your own devices, to sink or swim as you choose.

Sometimes I have the weird feeling that what the younger generation calls "socialism" is just some kind of vague warm fuzzy way of saying "good manners" and/or "civility" or even "concern for your fellow man." This is a hideous distortion possible only among people who don't know dick about history.

Are you really implying that unless America can "fix" Islam, everything is doomed to fail? Is mere progress insufficient unless perfection can be guaranteed?

Yes. And we can't fix the rift in Islam. It isn't progress when we take four years and can't quite bring things back to where they were at the start.

So, underneath this criticism, you're saying what? That this is all a waste of time and we should just leave, since they're too stupid to get over their own disagreements and prosper?

Yes to the first part. The best hope for Iraq is partition, which is happening at a local level in every mixed area anyway. Formalize it and force it to happen since we have no chance of fixing Islam. Don't waste time spinning the surge.

Mac, on a side note, and with a big bow of apology to Rand, we were right about Snape, eh? I did have a sneaky suspicion he was in love with Lily. Cheers.

Mac, on a side note, and with a big bow of apology to Rand, we were right about Snape, eh?

What's the apology to me for?

Going off topic on the most enjoyable read I've had in ages!

Yeah, we were right about Snape, and I was mostly right on Dumbledore as well. All in all, her best work.

Back on topic though, the perfect way to describe why socialism should not work is this...

If you come to me and take five dollars out of my pocket to give it to a poor person, its stealing. If the government comes and takes five dollars out of my pocket to give it to a poor person, its still stealing, but they claim they're helping. If I give to the poorer than me because I want to, its charity. If the government STEALS my money to give to the poorer than me, its socialism.

I don't think that Toast was thinking when he spouted his nonsense about the military in Iraq being an example of "socialism." I think he was engaging in the usual pseudo-argument that comes up wherever uneducated people talk above their knowledge level -- for instance, for Toast, "socialism" seems to be a euphemism for "things I like" or "a situation working out in a pleasing way." Pay attention, Mr Tea: "socialism" is a political and economic ideology which posits that all important industries (and this definition of what industry is "important" shifts all the time) should be in the hands of a large government -- which by default will be the major employer of the people. In a socialist economy, people are "allowed" to open small, cute businesses as a hobby, but they not expect to pay most of their earnings in taxes. In other words, socialism is communism-lite.

Another indicator that Toast wasn't thinking is that he just revealed that being under a military rule, having everything done (and therefore dictated by) the military to be just jolly with him. Oopsie!