The following letter arrived in our offices via email from a family member of a US soldier in Iraq. The soldier writes:
Building this country back up is turning out to be a monumental task and, as much as we try to be fair on the macro scale, we seem to be so unfair on the micro scale. I went on a raid a couple weeks ago with OGA to a club that used to be owned by Uday Hussein. We were augmented by a group of soldiers from the 3-124th Infantry Battalion, a National Guard Unit from Florida.
Fuel is a big issue in Iraq right now and all the main streets are lined with people selling fuel out of any jug or can they can scrounge. This practice helps unemployed people make an extra buck but drives up the prices overall so it has been outlawed.
We got to the front of the club about 11:00am, it was already getting hot and it was in a bad part of town, only a couple blocks from the Jordanian embassy about 4-5 days after it was bombed. The gate at the front of the club was locked and our source which was disguised and sitting in my vehicle said there was an open entrance around back. As we turned to leave we were confronted with a man who was selling fuel on the sidewalk out of a five gallon plastic jug.
He was probably in his late 20s or early 30s. He was mentally handicapped and physically disabled as well. The infantry Lieutenant and his NCO promptly pulled out their knives and started to cut holes in his jug, letting perfectly good fuel run out into the street. The man stood their helpless, you could see in his eyes that he was watching his wages run down the drain.
At the time I was more worried about the raid and didn’t think much of it but that night it really disturbed me. On the one hand the soldiers did the right thing, allowing this practice to continue hurts the community as a whole, it can’t be tolerated. On the other hand, it breaks my heart to see this man who was probably earning money the only we he physically could, be robbed of his livelihood. I know were doing the right things here for the most part but when you focus on the specific human costs of our endeavors, it makes you question your humanity.
Comment: Of course putting small vendors out of business doesn’t drive down the price of gas; it drives it up. Is the US attempting to enforce price controls or merely an oil monopoly of officially approved vendors?
