Now that the roadblocks of De-Baathification imposed by Paul Bremer have been removed by the Iraqi government, they need to take things a step further and foster private business and small industry to jump-start their non-govermental economy
This takes skilled workers, and to get there Iraq needs a glut of two-year trade schools. The largely unemployed youths who could quickly turn to insurgency need something to do with their idle hands, and right now there is a ton of infrastructure to rebuild, and a future to create for their country.
To get there Iraq needs to open quite a few trade schools – electrical, carpentry, plumbing, masonry, tile, computer, communications, well you get the idea. Iraq is not cash-short at the moment and won’t be for the forseeable future with oil prices high, so the window of opportunity to do this in is right now. Trade schools make sense because there is a generation whose education was interupted by the war – 100% of them can’t go to college, so the fast-track to gainful employ for them will be shorter trade-schools.
Iraq needs to invest in their youth, and unions from around the world need to assist in those efforts by sending skilled workers to train the future workers of Iraq. There’s a parable about teaching fishing that applies here.
