Giuliani declares Iraq is like New York

Okay, take a deep breath New Yorkers. It seems our former Mayor may have decided to run for President of the loony-bin rather than for the United States of America. An Op-Ed published early this morning by Giuliani and another possible Presidential contender Newt Gingrich in the Wall Street Journal is raising a lot of eyebrows.

First off they realize that civil projects are necessary and that military solutions will not work. Whew, at least they are smarter than the current President. Their main idea is to create a job corps protected by U.S. troops to improve the city with public works and what not. Then they can buy goods with the money they earn and in turn everyone can be happy and peaceful. Why will this work when things have been falling to pieces for the last four years? I'll let them say it in their own words.

There are many lessons from the successful welfare reforms in New York City that can be readily applied in Iraq. In the early 1990s, New York City suffered an average of 2,000 murders a year while more than 1.1 million people--one out of every seven New Yorkers--were unemployed and on welfare. Too many neighborhoods were pervaded by a sense of hopelessness that came from a combination of high crime, high unemployment and despair. "Workfare" proved an excellent method to change this destructive decades-long paradigm. It required able-bodied welfare recipients to work 20 hours a week in exchange for their benefits. In the process, we reasserted the value of the social contract, which says that for every right there is a responsibility, for every benefit an obligation.

Time to wake up boys. Iraq is NOTHING like New York City. Not now, not in the early 90s, not ever! Two thousand murders in a year is a terrible statistic in any city, but in Baghdad the death toll easily top 2,000 each month and is constantly rising! Their solution is utterly implausible because Giuliani and Gingrich are ignoring the reality of what is going on in Baghdad and Iraq.


The picture posted in the WSJ says more than enough regarding the opinion of this piece. Uncle Sam is gloriously bringing aid from the U.S. government (that can't fix it's own cities by the way) to the grateful citizens of Iraq. This is typical 'White Man's Burden' bullshit. The Iraqi people want us to leave as soon as possible. They know we have done far too much in regards to the decimation of their country. It is time to leave now, not to make more of a mess.