Government Is The Problem!

Government is the Problem!

Baghdad, Iraq

"These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history.

It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people.

Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, human misery, and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity.

But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present.

To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.

You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time.

Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation?

We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding: We are going to begin to act, beginning today.

The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades.

They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away.

They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we've had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

Sound strangely appropriate?

It was the inauguration speech on January 20, 1981 of Ronald Reagan.

As amazing as it might seem, a good lesson to those attempting to return the US to a government run system can be had in Baghdad, Iraq.

One could call it "The Tale of Three Internets".

There are three buildings, literally in a row in downtown Baghdad.

In two of them, the Internet works flawlessly. In one it is a total disaster.

Building number one is a large hotel.

The internet service is provided by a small company that simply installed a dish outside, hooked up the computers and they work perfect.

The second building is one run by an American contractor. Again, it runs perfectly.

The third building used to have perfect internet service.

That was when it was run by an American contractor.

Due to constant pressure to "hand things over", it was returned to the Iraqi Government.

The internet service is somewhat of a joke now.

In the morning workers come into the large room where 25 computers are all arranged.

They are so new many still have the plastic on them.

They sit down at the computers; go to the internet and wait and wait and wait.

The ritual continues as they all look at each other with that knowing look and leave.

Once again it doesn't work.

It has been like this for six months now - every since it was "handed over to the Iraqis".

"It is a mess" says Rita Hussein

"Since the government began managing, it nothing works. They come once in awhile and get it going for awhile, but it never works. Yesterday they had it going for ten minutes. They simply don't care. If we complain, though we get in trouble. That is what happens when government runs things like they do for everything in Iraq" she concludes.

As the United States turns more and more facilities over to the Iraqi Government the once squeaky clean and perfectly run facilities are taken over by the creaky, socialist system inherited from Saddam Hussein and instantly fall into disrepair.

Sadly, Iraq is littered with formerly American run facilities, turned over too soon to the Iraqis and now a mess

Amazingly for all the bad he was able to do in such a limited time, including disbanding the Iraqi Army, Ambassador Paul Bremer and his Coalition Provisional Authority never got around to changing the socialist system put in place by Saddam Hussein and his socialist Baath Party.

A quick check of staff at various Government agencies finds them staffed not by professionals, but by relatives, people from the same hometown as the particular minister or supporters.

The "tale of three internets" is an appropriate one as Americans consider getting out of Iraq as well as the future direction of their own country.

All the internet facilities are next to each other with the same systems, same country - two work and one never does!

For the desperate workers just trying to get some work done where do they go?

They go across the street and use the internet at one of the two private services that always work and long for the day when the American Contractor ran theirs!

Even Iraq has some advice for us!

As Ronald Reagan put it 28 years ago, on January 20, 1981 on the steps of the Capitol, "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

Are we listening?

Amir George in Baghdad