Iraqi soldiers are demanding that their pay continue even as the Iraqi army is dissolved by the occupation authority. Their logic is impeccable: they earned their pay — by not fighting:
Iraqi soldiers said today that they should not be neglected in the new Iraq. With many of his men urging him on, Colonel Muhammad talked of how the war might have unfolded if he and the many others had taken up arms. “The Iraqi soldiers are champions,” he boasted. “We are so fierce. If we had fought, the war would still be going on. The British and the Americans would not be in our palaces. They would not be on our streets. We let them in.”
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman