Here’s another installment of “Global view” — a feature bringing you opinions, analysis and commentary from local contributors with ties to Orange County but global expertise and connections.
Eileen Padberg has managed public affairs and political campaigns for over 25 years in Orange County. She also consults for an international organization that works with emerging democracies, traveling worldwide to provide political training for countries such as the former Soviet Union, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Guatemala.
Padberg spent 22 months in Iraq beginning in June 2004, helping Iraqi women get jobs, career training programs and starting new businesses. The Women’s Initiatives provided career development training such as Leadership and Management to over 1,900 mid and senior level women in the Iraqi government. In addition, over 350 women owned businesses were trained on how to bid and win U.S. reconstruction contracts, resulting in more than 500 substantial contracts being awarded to Iraqi women owned businesses. Read more about her on her website.
In her debut commentary, Padberg writes:
“I was honored to be present a couple of weeks ago when Lt. Col. Jason Bohm, commander of the 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment made a presentation to the Laguna Niguel City Council regarding his work in Qaim, Iraq, which is officially Laguna Niguel’s Sister City.
It was a great presentation. Lt. Col. Bohm talked about how he and his unit worked closely with the Mayor and the Sheik in the area, helping them to understand rule of law and putting people to work and making the city safe for all of Qaim’s people.
He was so grateful to the citizens of Laguna Niguel for their continued support in a very important mission. I shared his enthusiasm and his hope for the Iraqis and I was proud to know that the city that I call home actually took this gigantic step.
I had worked with a few of the military civil affairs personnel when I was trying to get construction contracts for Iraqi women owned business and really felt that they were the ones that were making a difference.
They were working side by side with the Iraqi Tribal Sheiks throughout the country. They were building schools, orphanages, restocking hospitals and getting the water and electricity up and running in the smaller cities and towns.
I spent 22 months in Iraq implementing a women’s development program that I believed would be crucial to achieving democracy. As a civilian who lived nearly 2 years in Baghdad’s Green Zone and traveled throughout the country, I saw first hand the mistakes that we made.
More reliance on the one to one relationship building and more reliance on the Tribal Sheiks, instead of the wealthy Iraqis that fled the country under Saddam and came back to enjoy the “spoils” of war, would have solidified loyalties to the U.S.
We made so many mistakes that were apparent even at my level in Iraq - we did not send enough troops (in a country that is about as big as California), we failed to close the borders (allowing insurgent’s easy access from Syria and Iran to recruit for al Qaeda). We, in our infinite wisdom put thousands of Iraqis out of work, assuming that they might be “Baath” party members.
Then to add insult to injury as we say here in America, we imported thousands of third world workers – India, Philippines, Egypt, Africa, and Indonesia – to do work that the Iraqis could have done and wanted to do.
We failed miserably to invest in the Iraqi people and in women in particular despite the promises that were made. What we invested in was America’s industrial complex.
We sent thousands of our most expensive engineers to Iraq to rebuild the country’s infrastructure that had suffered from years of neglect and war.
Those engineers spent thousands of hours in the Green Zone designing the state of the art and mega everything and by the time they were actually ready to build the insurgency had reach its most violent point. Those very expensive engineers, for the most part, stayed inside the Green Zone waiting for the insurgency to die down.
In addition, we imported everything – from every fruit and vegetable to every ream of paper for the thousands of copy machines we shipped to Iraq.
We did not invest in the economy and let ourselves feel comfortable that we wee advancing democracy just by hiring a few local Iraqis.
We have a crisis of leadership in our country. We have lost faith in the President, in Congress, in the media. We have conflicting messages and little or no leadership on this most important issue.
The greatest threat to America is the lack of leadership, integrity and commitment by our elected officials at all levels of government. The city of Laguna Niguel showed all of those leadership traits by adopting the city of Qaim and Lt. Col. Bohm and his 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment. Hoorah.
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TO THE READER: Do you agree with Padberg’s analysis? Share your views here. Remember that comments are edited, so keep them civil and relevant.
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An up-close-and-personal
look at daily life inside Iraq compiled from
posts from Iraqi journalists in McClatchy's
Baghdad Bureau.
Eileen is right on target! Her take on what went wrong–and what should have been done–is finally being validated by the new approach taken by General Petraeus. Too bad it’s taken so long. Hopefully it’s not too late for Eileen’s work on behalf of women to also bear fruit and validate the work and risk she took to try to help them.