21 Day War over, "mopping up" begins!

[Jedi Poker]

It's truly amazing how quickly the Coalition has made powerless the Saddam Regime. As of April 9, 2003 - only 21 days after the war began - the objective of "regime change" has indeed been achieved. The Coalition is now the de facto regime while uncoordinated command-less and control-less elements of the previous regime have in fact become the outsiders. In other words, the Coalition is the Government while remnants of the Saddam regime have become a band of rebels.

And now, "mopping up" begins. Ironically, this phase presents more risk to the lives of individual American soldiers (who effectively are the police force of Baghadad) in the field. This is so because the temporary absence of a central government makes it so that there is no real identifiable enemy. Just random groups of suicidal thugs fighting for a leader that no longer leads.

To summarize: After 21 Days of fighting, the war is finally over but the more dangerous (in terms of risk to the lives of the individual American soldier) phase of mopping up has begun. I hope the Coalition declares martial law as soon as possible. I also hope that they introduce a food (or money) for guns program - this move should eliminate a lot of guns from circulation very quickly, thus lowering the risk for the US soldiers and to the UN and Red Cross personell that should be moving in soon.

I hope, though, that the Coalition delays the official declaration of victory for months using "extreme dangers during the mop up phase" as an excuse to keep the UN at arms length for a while. In fact, they should declare victory only - and only - after at least 200 US companies have already been locked into juicy long-term contracts to fix infrastructure and exploit Iraq's oil resources. The fact is, the US risked blood and money while the others didn't. And it has to be paid for doing so! The Iraqis will be happy because this will create jobs. By allowing US companies to jumpstart the Iraqi economy, perhaps the US economy can be jumpstarted as well. Crisis is opportunity.