Month: November 2007

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A Talking Frog

This old guy is walking down the street and sees a frog on the pavement.  To his surprise, the frog speaks and says, “I am an enchanted princess.  If you kiss me, you will break the spell and have a beautiful woman forever.”  The old guy just puts the frog in his pocket and begins to walk along.  The frog complains, “Maybe you didn’t hear me.  I am a beautiful enchanted woman.  If you kiss me, you will have me forever.”  The old guy replies, “At this stage in my life, I figure a talking frog is more interesting.”

I went to see the Purrfect Angelez, pictured above, at a camp show in Al Qaim.  They treated the assembled multitude to an impressive show of gymnastic flexibility, punctuated by less impressive singing.   But it quickly got repetitive, not that it seemed to bother most of the Marines.  I kept thinking about how hard some of those moves would be on a person’s back or knees and it was then I realized that I had been gradually but inexorably moving into the talking frog stage of life.  I am not saying that I am not interested.  The show was worth seeing, although perhaps not worth going to see.  After about a half an hour of watching their vigorous gyrations and observing the enthusiastic response they got from the Marines, I shuffled back to my can to read my book.   I noticed that my PRT colleagues, whose median age is 49, also did not stay much longer.  That is no country for old men. No matter how much we want to pretend, interests develop and that is probably a good thing.

This is kind of a miscellaneous posting.  Take a look at the picture below.  Yes, it is two bottles of mayonnaise sitting in the sun.  I do not know how long they were out there, but let me give you an additional piece of information:  The Marines in Husaybah live with the Iraqi police and they usually prepare their own food.

I was sitting out in the courtyard of the joint Marine-Iraqi Police building listening to the wind and contemplating the nature of things,  when I notice the mayo.  A short time later a couple of Marines came out and we got to talking about their living and working conditions.  They generally liked the Iraqi police and they thought that the fact that they were integrated with the community and got more local food, different from the standard chow hall fare, was a good thing.  It was a more authentic experience than eating the same meat loaf and red jell-o you get in all the chow halls in all the world.  But one of them mentioned, off handedly, that stomach viruses were a bit of a problem among the guys.  Ya think?  Of course, if you leave it out long enough, I hear it turns into special sauce.

All this makes me think of that lesser known Yeats poem.

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I Can’t Complain

Above is my office at my last job when I ran the Worldwide Speaker Program.  I could see the Capitol from the window.  The view from my office in Iraq is not so nice. 

I have been getting lots of emails from people asking me about jobs in the Foreign Service or in Iraq.  I am probably the only FSO they know but hiring procedures are things I know not too much about.  I let HR do their job.  I came in the FS in 1984.  Things were different back then (of course, much harder.  Kids today have it easy.  When we were young …) But I can give you my opinion about careers in the FS and a webpage (www.careers.state.gov) were you can find out more.

I could tell you that I always wanted to be an FSO, but I would be lying.  My father wanted me to be a truck driver and I wanted to be a forester or maybe an archaeologist.  Becoming an FSO was more a result of serendipity than design.  I was taking a nap in the student union at the University of Wisconsin.   When I woke up, I saw a booklet called “Careers in the Foreign Service” laying on the table.  My snoring had driven away the previous owner.  Before that, I did not know there was such as thing or at least I did not know that someone like me could get in. 

FSOs join State through a written test.  It is pretty hard, but not impossible.  I wonder how some of my colleagues got in and I am sure they wonder the same about me.  You have to know about little things and about lots of things most people do not care about.  FSOs are very good at Trivial Pursuit and we can usually impress our friends when watching Jeopardy.   Skills that sell in the marketplace…?  They are useful skills for us because we are generalists.   As generalists, we do what we need to do.  They told me when I came in that my duties could range from talking to important officials to carrying luggage.  I have done both.  Sometimes the luggage job is more fun.

All joking aside, the FS has been good for me.  I have been able to do things and meet people I could never have done.  The FS taught me three languages: Portuguese, Norwegian & Polish.   It gave me a year at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy and paid ME to attend school and live in New Hampshire.   I have never had a job in the FS that I did not enjoy – mostly – and that includes my current job here in Iraq, which is often uncomfortable and sometimes a little scary but tremendously rewarding.

The hardest part is the travel and living in foreign countries.  I know many readers are thinking to themselves that these are the great advantages, the very quintessence of the FS and they are certainly right.  But it is also hard.  You do not have the feeling of home and you are always an outsider, a sojourner, a stranger in a strange land (okay, I will stop with the descriptions).   When we got back to the U.S. and lived in Virginia, I realized how much I enjoy being an ordinary American citizen, a participant in the affairs of my country and community.  Diplomats are always guests, never participants and by clear definition never citizens of their host countries.   

It is the career I wanted and I thank God I woke up to find that brochure at the Student Union, but the FS is not for everybody.  After I come back from Iraq, I am thinking of retiring.  The FS is a great job, but maybe it is time to do something else.  I just don’t know.   That is the final advantage of the FS.  You can retire at 50 (with 20 years of service).  You still are young enough to find something else and you have the FS retirement to fall back on if you don’t.

Below is the American Indian Museum was a short walk from my office at SA 44.  Washington is a nice place to live too and you live there about 1/3 of your career.

FS is good work if you can get it.  At least I really can’t complain. Check out the webpage at www.careers.state.gov.   BTW – the Department did not put me up to this.   As I said, I am getting dozens of emails.  Maybe this will answer some of the questions.   

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Veterans Day

The picture shows those famous big Saddam crossed swords.   The hands are replicas of Saddam’s even down to the thumbprint.  Around them and in the road are Iranian helmets.  Saddam liked to “walk on the heads” of his enemies.  There used to be more helmets, but people pry them out and steal them as souvenirs.  It is not worth the trouble, but some people take what they can.  If you stand in a particular spot, it looks in a photo like you are holding those swords   Somebody has marked the sweet spots on the street.  The guy holding the swords is Major Murray, who handles most of the logistics on our PRT. 

It is interesting that Saddam would set up a memorial to his victory when he didn’t win anything and the war nearly destroyed his country, but setting up monuments to dubious victories is an old tradition in the region.  Pharaoh Ramesses did it at Kadesh.  It is actually a parallel.  Ramesses managed to get ambushed by the Hittites, but called getting away and scurrying back to Egypt a major victory.  I guess in his case it worked.  Most people remember Ramesses, but nobody can recall the name of the Hittite king.  Of course, I do not think anybody will recall Saddam in the same way, and I am wandering way off subject.

I am not a warrior and I do not have to be.  I am 52 years old, still alive, free and have never been seriously oppressed or had to face a situation where my courage was severely tested.  For most of human history, being all those things at the same time would have been an impossible or at least an unusual achievement.   Americans take such freedom, security and prosperity for granted thanks to the men and women who keep us safe.  We honor them, too often perfunctorily, on Veterans Day each year.  This year it means more to me, because I am living among heroes.

Our military today is all-volunteer but that does not mean that everybody is a professional soldier.  Here in Iraq I have enjoyed meeting the history teacher from Georgia, who was trying to make a living farming, but was currently doing his duty for his country in Iraq and  guy commanding the Marines at one of the power plants who is an investment banker back home.   We have cops and firemen, pharmacists and small business owners.  They represent the best of America.  The skills they bring from their civilian lives are helping build peace in Iraq and the experiences in Iraq will surely make them better citizens back home.  When you see how fragile freedom can be and how it must be defended, you understand how precious it is in America.

Of course, there are many here who have chosen to make the military their careers.  The striking thing about them is how seriously they take the development of leadership and their responsibility to their jobs and their fellow Marines and anybody else around.  Even very young Marines take charge, full responsibly, “ownership” of their duties.   My particular hero is the Regimental Commander.  I have been observing his leadership style with great interest and will try to adapt some of his techniques.  

Almost everybody in my father’s WWII generation served in the military.    In the later baby boom, my generation, such experience is much less common.  Most in my generation and those that followed don’t know the military first hand and we often get our impressions from what we see on TV or the movies.  Those images are almost always either out of date or wrong.  Some of the images portrayed in the media are downright pernicious, created by people who really do not know what they are talking about.  Most of the soldiers and Marines I meet in Iraq are smart, polite and patriotic.  They do not like to be here, and who can blame them, but they are fully committed to doing their jobs.

The thing that may surprise those who know the military only from old M*A*S*H reruns or movies like “A Few Good Men,” is the intellectual power of many of the officers.   These guys think very clearly about their duties and goals, as well as the ethics of what they are doing.  They see the big picture and apply various historical analogies, cultural sensitivity and sophisticated management methods to their analysis.  Then they make decisions that test their theories in practice.  More things COULD happen than can happen and many elegant suppositions do not survive a real world test.  America is very well served by its professional military and I sure am glad having the Marines looking after me in Iraq.  They get the job done.

So on this Veterans’ Day, I just want to say thanks.  All Americans should be proud.

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The Rest of the Iraq Story

I did not have an appropriate picture for this article, so I reached back into the files for something pretty.  As you can see by the date stamp, the picture is a couple years old.  It is taken around 100 meters from my house in Londonderry, New Hampshire, where we lived when I was at Fletcher.  It was even prettier in October and there is probably more fresh water in that picture than in all of Al Asad.  I could stretch it and say that I chose the picture to go with my trout metaphor below, but the truth is that I just like to think of the green and pleasant places.  I won’t be in this desert long enough to forget.

I know that good new is no news, but maybe it should not be that way.   Some things sometimes DO get better.  A key reason for following the news is to understand the world in order to make informed decisions, so positive developments are as important as negative ones.  If you measure the success of your fishing trip only by how much bait you use, you may miss out on the grilled trout in lemon sauce.

Journalists (IMO) often prefer bad news because it better fits with their cynical personalities.  It is also easier to write a bad news story.  That is why when the things get better journalists melt away like snow on a warm spring afternoon.  I guess it is a positive sign that journalists have stopped coming to Anbar.  I think there are only four of them around here right now and they are bloggers.  We will not be seeing much of CNN or CBS anytime soon, unless conditions go badly wrong or they are following a big shot on a quick visit.

This media propensity to follow bad news and step back when things improve leaves the false impression that conditions only get worse.  (That is probably a big reason why so many people in the modern world have such a negative outlook on conditions that are pretty good by any historical standard.  They see the worm hit the water, but never hear about the trout being reeled in.)   Journalists often say that they are just giving the public what they want, but is this really true?  Do we really want our media to be biased toward the negative?

I just received a new Pew Research Report on news coverage about Iraq.  As conditions in Iraq improved, news coverage dropped.  American media featured only about half as much news about Iraq in October as in January, when things were not going well.  Are journalists just giving the public what they want? 

Well…no.  According to the research, Iraq remains the most important item to the public and a growing number want more coverage.  They also want a different type of coverage.  The media likes to cover policy disputes among politicians, anti-war demonstrations and the costs of the war.  The vast majority of the public wants more about the experiences of the soldiers in Iraq and after they return to America.  A majority (52%) also says that efforts to improve conditions in Iraq are getting too little coverage.  Surprise, the public wants some balance.  You need all the shades of dark and light to paint the true picture.  All black just is not a useful perspective.

The public is not getting the news they want about Iraq or the news they need to be informed.  I was surprised to read that only 41% of those surveyed knew that casualties in Iraq had gone down.  I guess I should not be surprised.  Any spike is reported w/o the perspective that shows the general trend.

Progress is still fragile, but the indications are that Iraq is reaching a point where it is tipping in the right direction.  Most people in any civil disturbance are ambivalent.  They do not really want to pick sides; they just want to live securely and sit on the fence until they can reasonably figure out which side will win.  The Coalition and Iraqi forces are looking more and more like winners and that is starting to be a reinforcing trend as former insurgents lay down their arms and Al Qaeda & foreign fighters are killed, captured or otherwise neutralized.  The American public may well be surprised by the outcome in Iraq because the media has not been telling the rest of the story. 

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Happy Birthday USMC

In heaven there is no beer; that’s why we drink it here … NOT.   If Anbar is heaven, we have been seriously misled in Sunday School, but General Order #1 prohibits drinking by U.S. military in Iraq.  It shows respect for the local customs and probably saves a lot of trouble.  As a cruel hoax, the chow hall features coolers full of nonalcoholic beer.   It looks like real beer, but that one word modifier says it is not worth drinking.  If there is any real beer on Al Asad, I have never seen any sign of it, and I have looked – until today.  Today is the birthday of the United States Marine Corps and every Marine gets two beers – two real beers – on this happy day.  This includes honorary Marines like me.  All joking aside, it is an honor to be among Marines on their birthday.

First we got a half hour lecture about the history of 2nd Marine Regiment.  It was an interesting history, very heroically told by true believers.  More than the usual number of people showed up for the meeting.  After that, we all filed out and got two OPEN beers.  Nobody can share a beer; nobody can save a beer for later.  It is two beers for everybody and only two beers. Officers, enlisted men and FSOs all get exactly the same numbers.  Colonel Clardy promised to crush anybody who drank more than two beers.  He seemed serious and probably could do it, so nobody risked provoking his wrath.  There was some choice among brands.  We had Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Special Draft and ordinary Budweiser, I took the Miller.  Bud Light is no better than that ersatz stuff they have at the PX and Coors Light just a baby step above.  Budweiser is brewed from rice.   Need I say more?  Miller Special Draft really is decent beer and its flavor was significantly enhanced by its being in this here and now place.  We were a little worried there would not be enough beer to go around.  According to the Airforce, several cases of beer were “damaged” in transit and could not be delivered.  I am told their story is true.

As long as I am on the subject of beverages, let me say a few words about my favorite beverage, which is Coca-Cola.   I drink a lot of the stuff – more than 2 liters a day.  Until a couple of years ago, I drank ordinary coke.  I used to run a lot and burn off the calories, but nobody can outrun Father Time and after he trips you, his cousin Mr. Fat comes around.   I switched to Diet Coke in Poland.  In Europe it is called Cola Light.   But the interesting thing about Coca Cola, the ubiquitous symbol of the homogeneity of globalization, is that it tastes different in different places.  The best version of ordinary Coke, for example, is found in Brazil.  Western Europe’s Coke has a peculiar taste, but in Eastern Europe Coke is more like the U.S. variety.   European Cola Light is much better than Diet Coke you get in the U.S., even though the cans look similar.  What tastes like Cola Light in the U.S. is Coke Zero.   So when overseas, I drink Cola Light, which now I like even better than sugary Coke.  In the U.S. I go for the crisp taste of Coke Zero. 

Unfortunately, my switch to Diet Coke proved a temporary fix.  Father Time has delivered another kick in the keister and Mr. Fat moved right in again.   I will have to cut down on the chocolate now.  Life is tough all over, but with the proverbial couple of beers softening the blow, today who cares?

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Civics 101

I think this is Haburabi, but I do not know for sure.  I found him while walking around in Baghdad IZ.  The Peruvians guarding a nearby building knew less than I did about it.  They just thought it was bonito.  It did not have an inscription.  So I am just assuming it is Hamurabi because it COULD be Hamurabi and I need the picture of the great lawgiver in this post about the rule of law.  If anybody knows better, let me know.

The council for the sub district in Haqlaniyah is an important part of the emerging democracy in western Anbar.  Members take their positions seriously and of the twenty-two members, at least eighteen regularly attend meeting, but they lack of experience and the absence of clear lines of authority complicate proceedings. The council operates much like a homeowners association in an American suburb.  It avoids some of the issues that naturally might fall under its mandate and debates things beyond its scope.  Members are volunteers.  They were not elected to their posts.  Although they were later confirmed by the provincial governor and are paid for their efforts, the group was self formed by community leaders and/or those who thought of themselves as community leader.

The council conducted some useful business at the meeting we attended.  They discussed provisions for the support of widows, for example.  A bigger topic discussed was the need to create employment.  In this area, however, the Council is essentially powerless.  A disturbing aspect of the debate was, in fact, that Council members thought that they could plan job creation among private businesses and should be involved in micro management decisions of private enterprise. It is a idea the lingers from the failed socialism of the past.  It may take a while for them to realize that they can help create conditions for employment, but that they do not create the jobs.

After the Council meeting, we were treated to a Kabuki performance by a Deputy Mayor. Our ePRT had approached him some time ago to ask him to develop a project in cooperation with the Council.  This latter requirement was specifically the purpose of the project.  Project definition was flexible, since this exercise was designed to foster cooperation among local government officials.  The Deputy Mayor developed plans for a sports complex, avoiding consultation with the Council, while leading the PRT to believe otherwise.   We had come to this meeting ready to finalize a project we thought had been vetted and approved.  We were surprised when the Council Chairman told us that his higher priority would be lighting in the market places and surrounding streets. 

With his game revealed, the Deputy expressed outrage that he had worked so hard with no result.  The end result of this is that WE need to start again.

Beyond personalities, a systemic problem involves lack of coordination among the parts of government.   The councils in each locality can go directly to the provincial council and the governor. They need not coordinate with neighboring districts or even with the mayor of their own locality.   There currently is no district council.   To take the homeowner association analogy to a conclusion, it is as if each homeowner’s association had a line directly into the state governor. 

The council experience will eventually produce leaders of Iraqi local democracy, but watching the process can sometimes be frustrating.  The experience that prepared me best to understand the whole process was my wife’s tenure on our local homeowner’s association.  Personalities rule. 

We cannot be too critical, however.   The problem is that these guys are acting like … politicians.  Democracy is sometimes messy, but it works better than the alternatives.

BTW – the Peruvian who didn’t know about the statue still insisted on having his picture taken when I told him I was going to post the statue picture, so I obliged. 

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My New Friends

I notice from my logs that the visitors at my blog went from around 100 a day to 1587 yesterday.  I am guessing that most of the newcomers are not friends & family.  You were probably drawn here by the notoriety of my comments re FS assignments in Iraq. 

My blog is not designed for a general public, but I certainly welcome anybody who wants to read it.  Most of what and how I write is idiosyncratic and probably interesting only to those who know me.  I don’t expect you will again find anything nearly as controversial as the posting that drew you here.  It was very interesting to see blog posts about what I had written.  My sad conclusion is that many bloggers (Certainly not all.  Some were good) write before they read.  Some are almost embarassingly supportive; others are critical and some are just stupid. I guess it is easier to have an opinion than seek accuracy. 

Anyway, even in an interesting place like Iraq, I tend to think prosaic thoughts, so if you are looking for excitement you probably came to the wrong place.  You are welcome to stay, but I won’t be put out if you don’t. 

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Forestry

Although I earn my money as an FSO, the thing I really like to do is grow trees.   I am the communication director for the Tree Farm Committee at the Virginia Forestry Association.  My main duties consist of writing articles for the magazine, “Virginia Forests”.   I also get to interview the Virginia outstanding tree farmer of the year.  Forestry is more an art than a science and I learn a lot from these masters of forestry that I can use on my own 178 acres in Brunswick County. 

This is the last profile of the tree farmer of the year that I wrote.  I am proud of the article and even prouder of the man I profiled, who has become a friend.  His son made three acres of wildlife clover plots on my land.

The Tree Farm Committee was gracious enough to let me keep my position with them while I was away in Iraq and I am still writing articles.   I hope to get home on R&R in the spring to interview this year’s Virginia tree farmer of the year.  I did not write a blog post today, because I wrote an article for them.  It also refers to Iraq and I include it below.

Forests in the Cradle of Civilization and the Old Dominion

As some of you know, I am writing this far from the forests of Virginia, as I am leading a Provincial Reconstruction Team embedded with the 2nd Marine Regimental Combat Team in Al Asad, Iraq. 

People have been cultivating the soil of this part of the world for more than 6,000 years.  Generations have prospered here, but they also made mistakes with their management of soil, water and vegetation.  We can learn from both their success and mistakes.  In this birthplace of civilization the principles of good stewardship of the land and what grows on it are very much on my mind.

There are well-managed forests here.  Iraq cannot support the forests of loblolly pine, oak or tulip-poplar we see at home, but there are forests of date palms that have been cultivated for centuries.  Our tree farm principles apply to them.  The palms provide fruit in the form of dates, and their shade and the microclimates they foster create environments that protect water resources and help plant and animal communities prosper.  Nearby, however, are barren regions where the soil has been destroyed by poor management, and not far away are examples of the disastrous results of forest exploitation. Hillsides once covered with cedars are now barren and rocky.  Some of these trees went to built Solomon’s Temple or ships for the Pharaohs, but many of these forests were not managed sustainably; they were not managed at all, and now they are no more.

With its ample rainfall and moderate climate, Virginia is a much more forgiving environment.  Our forests will regenerate if given even a small chance. In fact, we see the regeneration all around us. Many of our forests have been harvested and regenerated many times, but that blessing does not mean that good forest management is not essential.  In Virginia, we have the luxury of not asking IF the forest will regenerate, but rather, how long before it is again productive and what sort of forest it will be?  How well will management practices preserve the soil?  Will the waters flowing through the forest be cleaned by the sojourn or filled with silt and pollution from a poorly managed land?  What is the quality of recreation the land supports? Can wildlife flourish?  These are the questions a tree farmer asks — and a good tree farmer is proud of the answers.

Some of the lessons of tree farming might well apply in Iraq.  Most Virginia tree farmers are relatively small landowners.   They love their land, and that informs the management decisions they make about its future.  Here in Iraq it is often unclear who owns a piece of land.  Tribal, private, family and governmental claims overlap and various assets are divided.  A person may own the palms, but not the land.  Somebody else owns the water. One person can graze sheep; another can plant crops.  It is a type of ossified adhocracy. You can understand the logic in each individual aspect, but together they form a heavy burden. 

Those of us who own land in Virginia do not realize how lucky we are to have a clear system of land ownership.  It is hard to be a good steward of land when you cannot make decisions about it.  We are proud and thankful for the good decisions made by those who cared for the forests before us, and resolved to do our part for the future, so that Virginia will be now and forever a place of healthy and productive forests.

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When the Marines Go Home

I am in beautiful Baghdad at a conference to discuss what happens when the Marines start to leave.  It is a good thing that they can.  It is a measure of success in Al Anbar that the Iraqi army and police forces can take over big chunks of territory and it has to happen eventually, but it will make life harder for us at the PRTs.  The Marines give me my food, transportation and even my boots.  I need the Marines.

They will not be all gone, but Marine brigades in Al Anbar will be reduced by more than half by this summer, if all goes as planned.  This means fewer helicopters & humvees as well as fewer places to land the helicopter or park the humvee for the night.   Our AO is as big as the State of South Carolina.  It would be hard enough to travel such a big place, but Al Anbar does not have a good road system like the palmetto state and we have significant security concerns on long road trips.  Even absent these problems, I would look forward to driving 12 hours (that is how long it takes to get to Rutbah) through one of the bleakest deserts in the world w/o the prospect of rest stops or gas stations.

That is why we are making plans now.   Actually, I would call it perhaps less planning and more wishing or hoping.  There are a few options and we are already doing some things that make travel less crucial.  For example, we can (and are) sending our people out for longer periods.   They are essentially embedded in a local town for days or weeks.  We also are looking into hiring local employees, as I mentioned in a previous post.  What might end up happening is that we have a HQ at Al Assad, but most of the staff is someplace else most of the time.

Personally I do not need to worry too much.  As long as I am here (until September next year) there will be enough Marines to take care of most of what I need to do.  I will just need a little more planning and trip consolidation.  They would not have given me a new pair of boots anyway.

More challenging, but more interesting is how the PRTs will take over some of what the Marines do in civil affairs.  The Marines have done an excellent job of securing the country and beginning the job of rebuilding (building) those aspects of civil society that help keep the peace.   They are can do kinds of guys and they do the jobs they are given.

But Marines are fundamentally warriors.  Some of them are getting a little nervous that it is too peaceful around here for them to employ their particular talents to the fullest.  We (PRTs) will need to take some of that civil society program over.  Word is that I will get a few more staff members to go with the accretions of responsibility.   Following the Marines, we have some big boots to fill.

Above is the setting sun through the dust as seen from the back of a chinook.  I look at the world a lot through the back of a helicopter.

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Outstanding in His Field

This guy in thinking, “What the …?” 

We walked around some of the irrigated agriculture near Haditha.   The soil is rich.  Our Ag guy, Dennis, says that this place could have productivity similar to the Imperial Valley.  But there is not much in the way of crop variety or improvements.  They are using the same system as the Babylonians.  They dig ditches and flood square sections.   A lot of water is lost.  The soil is full of gypsum and it does not hold the water well.  Evaporation and salinization are also constant challenges.

In some ways life is perhaps too easy.  The primitive methods produce decent results.  Why mess with success?  Another reason might be lack of materials.   Pipes cost money.  Ditches are free.  But probably the biggest impediment to progress is the screwed up system of land tenure.  It is unclear who owns any given piece of land.  Tribal, private, family and governmental claims overlap.  It gets worse.  Various assets are divided out.   A person may own the date palms, but not the land.  Another person owns the water rights.   One guy can graze sheep; another can plant crops.   It is a type of ossified adhocracy.  You can understand the logic in each individual aspect, but together they form a heavy burden.  A guy might plant a date palm only to find he does not own the harvest; he might improve an irrigation ditch and learn he does not own the water.

One of our colleagues thinks a way to cut this Gordian knot is through real estate taxes.  We all hate to pay them, but they do serve to establish ownership.  I know that I was relieved to receive my first Brunswick County tax bill on my tree farm.   Until then, I nursed the unreasonable fear that I somehow had been duped by those slow talkin’ but clever locals. Paying property taxes indicates ownership and at least a minimal commitment.   W/o that commitment, someone can conveniently wait to assert a claim after all the work is done and when he can steal someone else’s labor.

BTW – you can see the difference between mere involvement and commitment in your bacon and eggs breakfast.  The chicken is involved; the pig is committed.

In any case, I did appreciate that I was looking at the Mesopotamia that Sargon or Nebuchadnezzar would have seen. Alexander the Great might have looked at the same scene as he passed down the Euphrates.  They would have been surprised only by this guy’s stylish clothes and the bike that evidently is his means of transport, otherwise not.

I wonder what the locals thought of us.  I am sure the rumor is more interesting than the truth.  Our “patrol” was just picking up dirt, putting our hands in the water and taking pictures of plants.  Dennis filled a couple bottles with dirt and put a dried turd into his bag for later analysis.   Crazy Americans.