Good News or Bad?

"Black-Market Weapon Prices Surge in Iraq Chaos".

Well, that could be a positive development. After all, if black market weapons were getting cheaper and cheaper, that'd mean it was getting easier for sundry militia groups and so forth to arm themselves. Sadly, read the article and it's clear that prices are going up because of surging demand for small arms, rather than falling supply. "Rising prices, in turn, have encouraged an insidious form of Iraqi corruption — the migration of army and police weapons from Iraqi state armories to black-market sales . . . three types of American-issued weapons are now readily visible in shops and bazaars here as well: Glock and Walther 9-millimeter pistols, and pristine, unused Kalashnikovs from post-Soviet Eastern European countries. These are three of the principal types of the 370,000 weapons purchased by the United States for Iraq’s security forces."

Under the circumstances, I think it should be obvious that trying to intensify our efforts to "stand up" Iraqi security forces aren't going to achieve the intended effects. We're just pumping more and more weapons into a society that's hardly suffering from a dearth of armed groups. Were we to start making more progress with Iraqi security forces, the problems would really only grow more intense because the next step would be to start giving them heavier equipment.

12/9/06 3:49PM del.icio.us this incoming links

Comments

but...but...but...more guns, less crime!

Posted by: kid bitzer on December 9, 2006 04:10 PM

one question I have on Iraq is where does the elite Iraqi leadership live, and who are they protected by? If they are living in the Green Zone, one step towards disengaging foreign troops from Iraq might be to have the top Iraqi leaders living apart from the top American/foreign leaders, and protected, if possible, by Iraqi soldiers.

Posted by: roublen on December 9, 2006 04:22 PM

. . . one question I have on Iraq is where does the elite Iraqi leadership live . . .

In the Green Zone when they're in country. I understand most also have residences abroad.

. . . one step towards disengaging foreign troops from Iraq might be to have the top Iraqi leaders . . . protected, if possible, by Iraqi soldiers.

Heh heh.

Good one.

Posted by: David Tomlin on December 9, 2006 04:35 PM

As any Republican ideologue will tell you, the more heavily armed a society, the safer it gets. I would be worried that rising prices for all these weapons would mean that not enough Iraqis could get the weapons needed for safety—except that, as any Republican ideologue will tell you, the Invisible Hand of the Market would never allow that to happen.

In short, everything is fine.

Posted by: dj moonbat on December 9, 2006 04:54 PM

The point may be a bit banal at this point, but the fact that army guns are flooding into the black market seems to be another indication that the solution to security is not simply signing people up to get training and guns. We're trying to build an army from scratch basically by spreading around weapons and military expertise indiscriminately. So when we hear senators (from Kerry to John Warner) say, "Step up the training!" then we should understand that's mainly because they really don't have anything to say.

Posted by: Jeremiah J. on December 9, 2006 06:15 PM

"...the proximity of an army causes prices to go up, and high prices cause the people's substance to be drained away."

-- Sun Tzu

Posted by: alphie on December 9, 2006 09:00 PM

OTOH, it depends on the volume. It could indicate inelastic demand, which isn't great. If instead the price change is driven by the supply dwindling then it is a good sign.

Posted by: Archit on December 9, 2006 11:27 PM

The gun nuts always love to tell me how an "armed society is a polite society". Iraq must be one of the happiest places on Earth.

The idea of dwindling supply seems implausible. The supply of surplus communist block sidearms looks almost endless. And i suspect the US will continue throwing small arms at Iraq almost indiscriminately until the decision to cut and run comes down. After that, we'll sell them instead of give them away.

Posted by: shecky on December 10, 2006 02:22 AM

Completely off topic: in this morning's WaPo, Robert Kagan asks, "How did we wind up in Iraq in the first place?" I almost splorted a mouthful of coffee all over the Outlook section.

I mean, we're there because of Robert Kagan and his fellow neocons. They asked for this war, they got it, Moqtada.

Of course, Kagan attributes it to America's "messianic impulse" in foreign policy; Bob and his friends were just the passive instruments of the national will, apparently. Except there's zero evidence that the national will would have taken us to Iraq if Kagan and friends hadn't spent the 1990s pushing their neocon hegemonist claptrap.

Posted by: RT on December 10, 2006 09:40 AM

Well, this definitely means I can get a better price for all these AK's I've gotta unload...

Ever notice how, around the same time everyone in the world got AK's, big powerful countries started losing wars to guerilla rebels? It's like the end of the Classical period, when all the "barbarians" got tons of cheap horses, and started to ride roughshod (literally) over all the sedentary "civilized" empires. That went on for a thousand years, until the nation-states got guns and shot all the warhorses. Granted, the AK is less mobile than the horse, but is what we're seeing now the beginning of a new dark age, fueled by cheap assault rifles?

Posted by: Mr. Noah on December 10, 2006 11:30 AM

High prices = High danger
Low prices = Low danger

Seems simple enough to me

Posted by: Jake on December 10, 2006 12:05 PM

A new york times article a few weeks ago said that, until I think it was October, the U.S. army was handing out weaponry to security forces with no record of registration marks and no ability to track where it went. So, as they begin to institute a record of the weapons the U.S. is supplying, black market prices go up. This makes sense. Since the U.S. is arming the insurgency and fighting the insurgency, arming the militias and fighting (selected) militias (with other militias), the logistics were pretty cheap. But if Uncle Sam is starting to get all worried about the guns killing its soldiers (not really a concern of the Bush administration for the past three years, but maybe one of the brownnosing generals gingerly suggested to the Rebel in Chief's men in the Pentagon that, uh, perhaps, uh, we should, uh, check into where those weapons are going, sir, not that we haven't been doing a fantabulous job in the past under the heros of liberty and freedom that have lead us to the outstanding success that we now see in the Middle East in this centerpiece of the war on terror, sir) - if the U.S. is getting stingy supplying the arms gratis to the varied forces in Iraq, well, just gotta steal them then.

Posted by: roger on December 10, 2006 01:32 PM

Sohbet Thanks you

Posted by: sohbet on September 22, 2007 08:03 AM

Good comment.Thanks admin.

Posted by: youtube on November 16, 2007 05:14 PM

Thanks
Best regards
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