In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
A Reactive Force
Presently our troops in Iraq react and run to the presence of insurgents. We attack Falluja so the insurgents pop up in Mosul we go to Mosul and the insurgents pop up in Tal Afar. Etc.
In the late eighties when I lived in New York this city was averaging around 7 murders a day. There were problems. The police were a reactionary force. They patrolled areas after the crimes happened. It was joked that the safest place in the city to be was in the northern part of central park in the days following the central park jogger attack. Pretty much every officer in Manhattan was there... well until a well publicized crime occurred elsewhere.
What changed? Why is New York so much safer now? A lot of people attribute it all to Giuliani, but while he deserves a little credit, much or what happened was out of his control:But most of all this is what made the crime go away:
- The general age of the population went up
- Heroin replaced crack as the drug of choice (a heroin addict isn't as dangerous, still a bad thing, but less dangerous).
Pretty obvious isn't it. And it made a big difference. Giuliani did help as he did enact some very common sense ideas that helped as well. The biggest was getting police out of their stations and put them back on the street. He returned beat cops to the streets of New York.
- The economy improved
- There were more jobs and they paid better.
But what really made the difference was jobs. Bush didn't spend the money he was given for reconstruction, not much of it anyway, and when he did he gave the contracts to friends of his, not Iraqis. If the army wasn't disbanded, if the construction jobs went to Iraqis, if the Iraq economy actually was able to have some footing, then the situation would be a lot different.
Fighting criminals was just a small part of lowering crime in NYC. Fighting insurgents can not be our only way of fighting the violence in Iraq... Unfortunately it seems to be our only tactic right now.
- rob 8:04 AM - [PermaLink] -
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