Follow Up Form - Community-Led Total Sanitation: Fill & Download for Free

Swachh Bharat Mission was initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 2, 2014, when he resolved to bring about an Open Defecation Free (ODF) India by October 2, 2019. The task ahead was not just to build toilets, but to bring about the requisite behavioral change among the community towards open defecation. Given the stipulated timeframe as Zila Swachh Bharat Prerak (#ZSBP) various measures, activities, system and processes were implemented in districts Agra and Kanpur Nagar of Uttar Pradesh to achieve the desired results.1. Efficient fund flow system- Direct Beneficiary Transfer (DBT)In DBT, the toilet incentive fund of Rs 12,000 was directly transferred to the beneficiary’s account in two equal installments of Rs 6,000 for the construction of IHHL (Individual Household Latrines), where the first disbursement happened on construction of twin pits with Swikriti Patra (Agreement Letter) to the District Panchayat Raj Office.The second happened when the toilet is fully constructed, painted and LGD (local government directory, code to uniquely identify a toilet) has been marked with Karya Purti Patra’ (work completion form) to the same.For fund transfer, the list of beneficiaries is sent to the bank in the bank’s desired format. The bank sends back various status reports such as failure and liquidation report etc., useful to understand the transfer of funds to the beneficiary’s account. This helped smooth fund flow avoiding any kind of financial discrepancies.2. Capacity buildingCommunity Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) workshops: Trainings were conducted to train ground-level motivators for working in SBM and were further deployed in villages as triggering teams to sensitise and trigger the emotions of the community towards sanitation.Training to Safaikarmis, Rozgar Sevaks, and SHGs on various aspects of SBM to involve a larger workforce for the mission as ‘Swachhta Doot’/’Swachhagrahi’.Mason trainings: Number of masons to be deployed in each village were estimated to make it ODF in stipulated time against the compressed demand of the village. The numbers of trained (on Twin-Pit technology) masons were increased by on-site mason training, and were further deployed at each gram panchayat (GP), where these masons trained other masons to create a big force of trained masons. On an average one mason can build one toilet in five days2. Capacity buildingCommunity Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) workshops: Trainings were conducted to train ground-level motivators for working in SBM and were further deployed in villages as triggering teams to sensitise and trigger the emotions of the community towards sanitation.Training to Safaikarmis, Rozgar Sevaks, and SHGs on various aspects of SBM to involve a larger workforce for the mission as ‘Swachhta Doot’/’Swachhagrahi’.Mason trainings: Number of masons to be deployed in each village were estimated to make it ODF in stipulated time against the compressed demand of the village. The numbers of trained (on Twin-Pit technology) masons were increased by on-site mason training, and were further deployed at each gram panchayat (GP), where these masons trained other masons to create a big force of trained masons. On an average one mason can build one toilet in five days3. Monitoring through war roomsThe progress of every GP was monitored at district and block level ODF war rooms against the compressed demand generated from each .Compressed demand = (Total Families in GP) - (Families with IHHL) - (Families financially capable to build their toilet)ODF war room is a fully functional room for coordinating, implementing and real-time monitoring of daily activities of SBM at the district and blocks. Block war rooms were initiated in Kanpur and Agra to decentralise the information-sharing and monitoring procedure of ground level activities to make an ODF district. It includes daily calls to the stakeholders and status update on WhatsApp groups via photos of ground activities.4. CLTS approachThe mission was implemented effectively by involvement of community by empowering people in the community. Following a model of incentivising and appreciating helped create a big motivated workforce to work for the mission.Nigrani Samiti: It is a 30-member team (10 kids, 10 women, 10 adults) from each village who were asked to do regular morning and evening follow-ups at places where people usually go for open defecation. They were empowered by giving a proper vigilance tool kit that has a whistle, torch, cap and jacket.Swachhagrahi: One person who leads the Nigrani Samiti in a village is trained on CLTS and was given ownership to make their village ODF and has been termed as Swachhagrahi. Their progress was reviewed at block and district level through ODF war rooms. They are awarded a sum of Rs 10,000 in two equal instalments- Rs 5,000 when the village is declared ODF and other Rs 5,000 after six months of ODF sustenance.5. Weekly review meeting of different stakeholders by district magistrateFor implementing a scheme like SBM, it is important to involve the highest order of district administration extensively. Hence, a weekly review meeting of pradhans, secretaries and Swachhagrahi of each village with ADO(P) and BDOs was initiated, which was headed by the district magistrate. This inflicted a sense of pride and importance in them and helped in accelerating the on-ground progress.6. High impact campaigns and Information, Education and Communication (IEC) activitiesIEC activities and campaigns are very impactful and ensure sustainability, since they trigger the emotions of people, thereby bringing about a sense of competition leading to behavioural change, which is the soul of the mission. The following IEC activities were carried out:

Thank You Mr.Sriram Srirangam for A2A.Hot general essay topic I predict is on sanitation, they may ask more specifically on rural(open defecation free) and urban(waste management).Topic: Sanitation problem in India is not because of policy lag rather it's a lag in public mindset.Disclaimer:I have approach this essay according to model essay that I have explained previously, Manu Halekote's answer to How do I write an effective essay for the UPSC Mains? please go through this before reading below essay.I have used lot of facts in the answer so that if aspirants read this they can remember some facts. But whatever facts you use in exam let it be relevant.I emphasized more on Gandhiji’s thoughts because if question framed around Ghandiji or on his quores, it can be easily answered.In essay, I focused more on structure only and content is directly taken from various sources from net.Facts I used were almost near, please check if you feel any facts are wrong.I have not used any maps or data tables or flow charts for presentation but I have mentioned everything in facts, so that you can alternatively use them while writing essay in exam.Here it goes:Sanitation means it is the hygienic means of preventing human contact from the hazards of wastes to promote health. Hazards can be physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health problems are human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic wastewater (sewage, urine and grey water), industrial wastes, and agricultural wastes.In 2015 there were less than 50% of households in the country have access to sanitation facilities, only 30 percent of the generated wastewater and generated sewage gets treated before being let into rivers and streams. During his maiden Independence Day speech the Prime Minister spoke about the urgency of the situation. He spoke about a nationwide program to clean up India and eliminate open defecation by 2019. But, several such programs have been in progress in the country for close to three decades. However, the achievements have been slow and disappointing.Historically, the Indian society has often given high priority to sanitation. Excavations from the Indus Valley Civilisation and Harappa reveal ingenious solutions to facilitate waste water conveyance through underground drainage systems. Sanitary engineering, as far as 5000 years ago, was at a developed stage. Such visions on improved sanitary practices continued across the reign of various dynasties – like the Mauryas, Guptas or the southern kingdom of Vijayanagara – that ruled the subcontinent. Even from an ideological point of view, various social reformers of India propagated the importance of sanitation.But recent past situation was highly opposite of Indus valley and rural India became the hub of diseases due to many unhygienic practices. Data says an estimated 4 lakh children die of diseases such as cholera, dysentery and suffer from stunted growth as a result of poor sanitation each year.Analysis of Sanitation coverage in India can be done with following classification :(You can present following facts that I have used here with the help of tables and maps, that I leaves to your novelty of Idea )Basic sanitation - refers to the management of human feces at the household level. This terminology is the indicator used to describe the target of the Millennium Development Goal on sanitation.In 2015, 88% of the total population had access to at least basic water, or 96% in urban areas and 85% in rural areas. The term "at least basic water" is a new term since 2016, and is related to the previously used "improved water source".In India in 2015, 44% had access to "at least basic sanitation", or 65% in urban areas and 34% in rural areas. At present, it is estimated that it reached to 76%, which was improved very drastically.In earlier years, in 2015, it was estimated based on Indian statistics that 52% practice open defecation. At present, it is estimated that almost 95% become open defecation free.On-site sanitation - the collection and treatment of waste is done where it is deposited. In India waste management is becoming the great challenge with increasing population and consumption.According to the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry predictions, "India will generate 130 million tonnes of e-waste by 2018 from the current 93.5 million tonnes in 2016.And by 2020, India is expected to generate 260 million tonnes of e-waste".Drinking water- refers to the hygienic measures for ensuring food safety and water.In 2008, 88% of the population in India had access to an improved water source, but only 31% had access to improved sanitation.In rural areas, where 72% of India’s population lives, the respective shares are 84% for water and only 21% for sanitation.In urban areas, 96% had access to an improved water source and 54% to improved sanitation.Access has improved substantially since 1990 when it was estimated to stand at 72% for water and 18% for sanitation.Menstrual Hygiene:In India, 62% women in the age group 15–24 years still rely cloth during periods.It has been revealed that about 43 percent of Indian women did not have access to sanitary essentials at the beginning of periods, while 36 percent felt uncomfortable in buying them with other customers around and as many as 67 percent women have had to borrow a sanitary essential from a friend, colleague or family member.In the past five years, India has seen an array of movements aiming to educate women about menstrual hygiene and sanitation. The taboo associated with menstruation outnumber the women who have to go through go through this process every month.Environmental sanitation - the control environmental factors that form links in disease transmission. Subsets of this category are solid waste management, water and wastewater treatment, industrial waste treatment and noise and pollution control.As of 2003, it was estimated that only 27% of India's waste water was being treated, with the remainder flowing into rivers, canals, groundwater or the sea.For example, the sacred Ganges river is infested with diseases and in some places "the Ganges becomes black and septic. Corpses, of semi-cremated adults or enshrouded babies, drift slowly.NewsWeek describes Delhi's sacred Yamuna river as "a putrid ribbon of black sludge" where the concentration of fecal bacteria is 10,000 times the recommended safe maximum despite a 15-year program to address the problem. Cholera epidemics are not unknown.Ecological sanitation - a concept and an approach of recycling to nature the nutrients from human and animal wastes.In India, the estimate for the production of biogas is about 20,757 lakh cubic meters in 2014-15. This is equivalent to 6.6 crore domestic LPG cylinders. This is equivalent to 5% of the total LPG consumption in the country.When it comes to the policies from pre-independence era to till now there were many awareness programs were tried even from Gandiji to present Prime minister.Though built on a history of understanding the relevance of sanitation, marginal concern was accorded to it among human settlements developed in the pre-independent period under British rule. Issues of governance were dealt through the lens of Britain’s experience in India. For instance, when rampant outbreaks of cholera and plague were affecting the health of the British Army personnel, it invoked the intervention of establishing improvement trusts to clean up cities, the first of which was the Bombay Improvement Trust in 1898. The trust was given an institutional mandate, which was lost post Independence.Here are the some of the prominent programs that Governments carried out:Central Rural Sanitation Program (CRSP), 1986: The first nationwide sanitation program. Several other large sanitation programs have been launched since then such as the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA) in rural India, and Basic Services for Urban Poor (BSUP) (under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission) and in urban India.It was formulated with the objective of providing for 80 percent subsidy for construction of individual sanitary latrines for BPL households on demand basis.The CRSP was restructured in 1999, with a shift from a high subsidy to a low subsidy model. The supply driven approach was altered to a demand driven model with increased emphasis on public participation.Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), 2001: which carried forward the demand driven approach focusing on awareness building.The program cost were shared between Union (60 percent share), state governments (20 percent share) and the beneficiary (20 percent share).As a fillip to the TSC, the Nirmal Gram Puraskar (NGP) was launched, to recognise the achievements and efforts of Gram Panchayats towards full sanitation coverage.Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA), 2007: NBA envisages facilitating individual household toilets to the Below Poverty Line and Identified Above Poverty Line households and providing school and community level sanitation.The NBA has now been converged with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to facilitate the rural households with fund availability for creating their sanitation facilities.National Urban Sanitation Policy (NUSP) in 2008: It was not until the inception of this policy that urban sanitation has been allotted focused attention at the national level. The NUSP instated a framework for cities to prepare City Sanitation Plans under the scheme of a State Sanitation Strategy. Urban Sanitation awards and ratings were also introduced based on the benchmarking of sanitation services.Centrally sponsored schemes such as JNNURM, Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme for Small and Medium Towns (UIDSSMT), Rajiv Awas Yojna, etc. provide funds for creation of sanitation assets like individual toilets, community toilet blocks and wastewater disposal and treatment facilities at the city level.Swatch Bharat Abhiyan, 2014: On 2nd October, 2014, the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, launched a nation-wide cleanliness campaign on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary. The concept of Swachh Bharat is to provide sanitation facilities to every family, including toilets, solid and liquid waste disposal systems, village cleanliness, and safe and adequate drinking water supply.We have to achieve this by 2019 as a befitting tribute to the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, on his 150th birth anniversary.PM said that the Swachh Bharat mission is beyond politics, inspired by patriotism and not politics. He also asked people to pledge 'I shall not litter and won't allow anyone to do so’.He further flagged off a walkathon as part of the Swachh Bharat Campaign, which is not just a slogan, but our responsibility.An analysis of India’s sanitation policies and programs thus far shows that their implementation has been purely government-led, infrastructure-centred, supply driven and subsidy-based. Our approach towards sanitation has been purely programmatic. This lack of a holistic overview has cost us very dearly; billions of rupees have been spent in building toilets that are not being used. Only 20 percent of the toilets constructed since 2001 were in place in 2011. The rest either had become unusable due to bad construction quality and lack of maintenance or were not just being used.Mindset lag:Though sanitation was historically and culturally rooted in India till 2015, 48 percent of country’s population defecated in open. Open defecation is not rural phenomenon, considering India contributes to 46 percent of global open defecation in urban areas. Gender related issues exist with 70 percent of crimes against women occurring due to defecation in the open.In survey conducted in rural Odisha, respondents reported that they felt no stigma associated with open defecation and preferred it over using a latrine as they felt using a latrine caused accumulation of faeces near the house.Case studies show that elimination of open defecation will require high degree of awareness creation and behavioral change for the population.Loss that India faced till now: The negative implication of lack of sanitation is reiterated wisdom. A World Bank study estimates that inadequate sanitation accounts for a loss of $53.8 billion (as estimated for 2006) in India, which includes economic losses recorded from tourism, access time, water use and health related economic impacts. This implies a per capita annual loss of $48. India is also a signatory of the Millennium Development Goals, but is lagging severely in meeting its goal on sanitation i.e “halving the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. It was formulated with the objective of providing for 80 percent subsidy for construction of individual sanitary latrines for BPL households on demand basis.Possible Solutions sighted through the Specs of Mahatma:India gained freedom under the leadership of Gandhiji, but his dream of a clean India is still unfulfilled. Mahatma Gandhi said "Sanitation is more important than independence". He made cleanliness and sanitation an integral part of the Gandhian way of living. His dream was total sanitation for all. Cleanliness is most important for physical well-being and a healthy environment. It has bearing on public and personal hygiene. It is essential for everyone to learn about cleanliness, hygiene, sanitation and the various diseases that are caused due to poor hygienic conditions. The habits learnt at a young age get embedded into one's personality. Even if we inculcate certain habits like washing hands before meals, regular brushing of teeth, and bathing from a young age, we are not bothered about cleanliness of public places. Mahatma Gandhi said, “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”Gandhiji dwelt on cleanliness and good habits and pointed out its close relationship to good health. No one should spit or clean his nose on the streets. In some cases the sputum is so harmful that the germs infect others. In some countries spitting on the road is a criminal offence. Those who spit after chewing betel leaves and tobacco have no consideration for the feelings of others. Spittle, mucus from the nose, etc, should also be covered with earth.Some general solutions:Sanitation Policies and Programs should facilitate participation of civil society (including women) in the design, implementation and monitoring of local priorities in rural and urban areas. The mistake of the programmatic paradigm adopted thus far has been the lack of localisation. This has led to a variety of issues like slow implementation, misplaced priorities of local government and complete dissatisfaction of the communities.Strengthening of institutions, efficient monitoring and evaluation for improved accountability and innovations in design and implementation will have to mark the final sanitation journey that India is going to embark upon. No policy is bad by itself, in so far as it is not too specific or too broad in its functional scope. The success of any government policy lies in its functional purpose, which is implementation, and implementation will be successful only after people’s participation.Teachers and students role is very important to create awareness on cleanliness. In today’s world the role of social media is important to create awareness among the people and inculcate a feeling of nationality among them. Even government is ready to give extra credits in academics if students participated in clean drives.Sanitation is important in our life as well as for the nation. It is well known that the Mahatma Gandhi personally took the effort to achieve the change that he wanted to see. It is of course too much to expect our present day leaders to go around the cities with their rising number of slums, and initiate a genuine drive to clean-up the surrounding. It is even less probable that they will pull themselves away from their market-focused pursuits and ineffectual, exclusive pursuit of GDP growth, to focus on the task of nation-building.Cleanliness is not only the responsibility of the 'safaai kaamgar' (sanitation worker) or local government. It is the responsibility of all Indians. It is the responsibility of the Government officers, NGOs and the local community to make India completely clean. It’s a need of the present that all the people should actively participate to clean India to fulfill the dream of Mahatma Gandhi for the protection of the environment, for our safety, and for a healthy future. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Everyone must be his own scavenger.” Let us spread and inculcate the message of Mahatma who once said “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”.

All these answers are good, but I wanted to add an opinion of someone who was there. I was a Sergeant in the US Marines and was deployed twice to Iraq, in 2005 and 2007, spending more than a year there. Trust me when I say that in an environment with absolutely nothing to do but contemplate how you got stuck in this mess, you arrive at a few conclusions that most Americans have the luxury to not dive too deeply into. I wanted to take this opportunity to share those thoughts with you now. You will probably note that I am a victim of some biases on the subject. I admit to this, I spent over a year there. It had a crucial impact on my development as a person and I have closely followed its progress in the years since. I have many opinions that differ from those who haven't experienced it first hand and hope that you all can find some value in that. That being said, disagree with me all you want or don't, but please read my entire answer if you intend to argue with it or comment. Thanks.I know that in hindsight, the easy answer is that we failed. We hate failure. We would do anything to not have failed, even pose questions that say that we should have never tried, given such horrific failure. Given all that, it makes a great deal of sense that there is a very good argument for never going to Iraq in 2003. I, however, disagree. There are reasons that I feel, for better or worse, moral or not, succeed or fail, we needed to go to Iraq. Don't get me wrong, I think we should have gone and spent much more focus on Afghanistan (another argument for a different day) by 2005, but I don't know if it was totally a mistake to go to Iraq in the first place.It wasn't wrong to go to Iraq.There had indeed been numerous instances of the use of weapons of mass destruction. Wikipedia describes the use of these weapons here: Human rights in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The two most notorious were the Halabja poison gas attack and the Al-Anfal Campaign.The Halabja poison gas attack occurred in the period 15–19 March 1988 during the Iran–Iraq War when chemical weapons were used by the Iraqi government forces and thousands of civilians in the IraqiKurdish town of Halabja were killed.Al-Anfal Campaign: In 1988, the Hussein regime began a campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living in Northern Iraq. This is known as the Anfal campaign. The campaign was mostly directed at Shiite Kurds (Faili Kurds) who sided with Iranians during the Iraq-Iran War. The attacks resulted in the death of at least 50,000 (some reports estimate as many as 182,000) people, many of them women and children. A team of Human Rights Watch investigators determined, after analyzing eighteen tons of captured Iraqi documents, testing soil samples and carrying out interviews with more than 350 witnesses, that the attacks on the Kurdish people were characterized by gross violations of human rights, including mass executions and disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants, widespread use of chemical weapons including Sarin, mustard gas and nerve agents that killed thousands, the arbitrary imprisoning of tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people for months in conditions of extreme deprivation, forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers after the demolition of their homes, and the wholesale destruction of nearly two thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms and power stations.[3][4]These weapons have shown the ability to kill thousands of people at a time. In Iraq's history since 1973 at least 10,000 Kurdish citizens of Iraq as well as 30,000 or more Iranians have been killed using combinations of mustard, CS, tabun and nerve agents in relatively few attacks.* This puts them on levels far exceeding any conventional weapon. They are in fact, the same types of weapons which nearly brought about US and international involvement in the Syrian Civil Conflict of 2013 when they were used on rebels because of the fact that they had been outlawed internationally. The main problem with this is that the understanding of what a weapon of mass destruction actually is, is unclear. In the US, terror attacks involving anthrax in envelopes were well known and it was thought that a weaponized version of this was what a WMD meant. It wasn't. Even more clear was the memory of atomic warfare, we being the only power to ever use one and only a decade after the end of the Cold War. Well this wasn't the only type of WMD either. However, this was what the everyday average US citizen believed we would find when we got to Iraq. When they weren't there we ended up with the common, and incorrect notion that so many still believe, that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.2) Some people just need to die**. Look, I am a Marine. That is how we think. Saddam Hussein was one of those people. The people of Iraq, by and large, are better without him. This was a man who committed terrible atrocities as I have previously mentioned, on his own people. He marginalized the rights of the majority of the populous, the Shi'a majority, gave special privileges, rights and jobs to those who were members of his political party, the Ba'aths. By the end of his reign the Ba'ath and Sunni almost completely made up the ruling class of Iraq. The worst matters, however, dealt with the inhabitants of the Northern region of Iraq; the Kurds. These people were a distinct culture and genetic line from the other Arab Iraqis and suffered greatly under his rule. After the invasion, Kurdish people led American troops to sites of Kurdish mass executions and an entire city that had been wiped out. What these people were facing was a modern day genocide, a holocaust. Yet we as a world community allowed him to remain in power. Even with his numerous atrocities and selective policies toward his elite minority Saddam Hussein always managed to win with 99% of the vote in every election. To be clear, I find this unfathomable. The man was an assassin before he became a politician. A literal assassin. He nearly died in an attempted assassination on a former ruler of Iraq. The man was ruthless. Is that really any kind of a person that should be trusted with millions of people? Whatever the case may be, I doubt very seriously that though he may not have had the weapons of mass destruction we believed he did, he would by now. Would he use them against us outright? I doubt that as well. I do believe, however, that he needed to be disposed of for the safety of Iraq and the rest of the world. I am just disappointed that we didn't do a very good job of getting a replacement ready as we should have. I know that a part of me will always wonder if much of the motivation for Iraq was to get back at Hussein for the attempted assassination on George H.W. Bush a decade earlier, but I really don't lose any sleep at night wondering if Saddam Hussein deserved to die.The simple fact is that a people who experience the safety and happiness we do have to ask ourselves why we put up with intolerable acts of human injustice such as what was experienced under the rule of Saddam Hussein. In most cases now we don't have the economic power to do so. In others political obstacles. For right or wrong, those hang ups did not exist when we went to Iraq. So yes, this man needed to die.3) Iraq was indeed a training ground for insurgent activity. That isn't to say that Saddam was a partner to the al-Qaeda or that there was any formal alliance between them, in fact I am pretty sure that there wasn't, but there was a very important presence in the country before the American invasion, both al-Qaeda and other fanatical groups. You really need to think about the international magnitude of al-Qaeda. They were formed first in Saudi Arabia and gained pull with anti-Western believers across the middle East. Today, after more than a decade of conflict with Americans, there still remains major cells spread from Pakistan to Somalia in the Horn of Africa as well as in the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. Iraq, situated just North of Saudi Arabia, the home of Osama Bin Laden, was a central region where the poor and uneducated of the Southwestern deserts of Iraq were recruited because of their disdain for America from our war in the 90's. The main training facilities dotted the deserts, but were abandoned during the pre-invasion buildup while our forces mounted in Kuwait. I know, not the red-handed moment we wanted yet again. There just weren't very many gift wrapped packages in Iraq for us.4) Winning the war was easy, winning the peace was hard. Americans undoubtedly showed their might in the first few months of the war in 2003. Even if you didn't think we needed to be there, there was no more powerful display of deadly and surgical force in the history of warfare. We executed to perfection a combined assault and air strike that in a single night crippled the Iraqi military infrastructure and completely defeated any attempt to resist the Americans and its allies. The longest and most successful blitzkrieg in history took place in that assault with the stretch of Iraq from from Baghdad to Kuwait being claimed in a matter of days. WWII took months to capture as much territory, and after the Germans had already been at war for more than six years. If the war had been closed in less than the few months it took to secure the major cities and not descend in anarchy then there would be statues built commemorating the greatest military victory of the modern era, but alas... In any case, I think that we could have done well in this war if the military victory was all that we needed to worry about. I'm not being boastful here, since I wasn't there for the invasion, but our warriors and Generals performed their duties to perfection and deserve honor and respect for that part of the war. Of course now they are looked at and feel like failures for not being able to win the political battle. Like I said, the war part was easy.It was wrong to stay in Iraq.You have my opinions on why it wasn't a horrible mistake to go to Iraq. Now I want to appeal to reason and give the reasons I think it was a terrible mistake to be forced to stay in Iraq.1) Shortly after we arrived came a devastating series of poor choices, bad leadership and lack of support for the military in Iraq. In my mind the most important mistake of the war was that, while we sent enough men to capture the key points and facilities of the country, we didn't send enough to police the people and keep the peace when looting and lawlessness took place after the breakdown of the civilian infrastructure. We also did not take enough engineers to get the power, water and health facilities up and running again. We managed to have a war with the lightest collateral damage in history (up to this point) yet we still had brought down all the country's civilian resources. This is what is known as winning the peace, being able to make sure that the people are cared for after their government is no longer able to take care of them. The original plans called for about five times as many troops to secure the country, yet Rumsfeld eventually wore down the Generals to the number that ended up deploying. As I said before, this was plenty to achieve the most efficient victory in war, but was dismally insufficient to secure the peace.2) The leaders that were sent to take control were dismal failures. Two stick out in my mind more than all others, L. Paul Bremer and Amhad Chalabi. Bremer was the American administrator of Iraq installed shortly after the war. This guy was really under-qualified for the role of governor of a combat zone. His resume is from business and while he was a real "go-getter" he never had any experience with international affairs and didn't even bother to take any Arabic-speaking aids with him. Among his few policies were two that had completely devastating consequences to the success of the war effort. The first, dubbed de-Ba'athification, was an order to fire everyone in the government who was in the Ba'ath party. 'They're the bad guys, right?' you might say, but to put a comparison to this it would be like if Obama became President and fired everyone in the government who was Republican. The "bad guy" chief officers are gone, but so are a great deal of the military, police, doctors, teachers, social workers, engineers and sanitation staff. Most of the most important jobs were now empty of the talent necessary to run them. Idiot. Second was his order to disband the entire Iraqi military. As I mentioned before, a large military is necessary to secure the population after a governmental collapse. So let's just get rid of the most easily accessible military force that we could use for such a policing action. Idiot. The other leader was Chalabi. He was the Iraqi refugee that we were planning to install as a temporary governor of the country until elections could be set up. The whole time leading up to the war he was spreading misinformation and was generally less than useful in our preparations for the takeover. After the invasion he went rogue and built up a makeshift militia to try and gain a few piss-ant victories under his belt so that he would be welcomed as the leader of a civilian takeover. He wasn't even capable of just taking control after he was offered the country and was eventually forced from office due to his incompetence and inefficacy. Of course the main issue with the leadership is the one who installed them. Yes, that's right. Bush really dropped the ball with his leadership team. Internal struggles were rife within the White House and Iraq was left in the hands of incompetents.3) Bring this together and you have the perfect storm for a breakdown and rise of militant sects to form a haphazard civil war. The military is jobless with nothing, but the knowledge of how to fight. The people are left without the infrastructure they need to feed or protect themselves and are desperate. No one has jobs and nothing is getting better. There is no leadership and everyone is friggin' pissed. The Americans aren't putting enough effort into relieving this situation in near enough time and what would happen? The first suicide bombers and militia fighters begin to arise. At first it was believed that these were the remnants of the Iraqi military. Nope, just desperate people now fighting as fringe agents. Enough time passed that they began to achieve some form of organization when the worst political decision was made. The Marines had cornered the rebel militia in a siege of the city of Fallujah when they were ordered to back down and not wipe them out completely. This acted as an event that brought the rebellion together, and gave them leadership and credibility. Now they were an army of guerrilla fighters whose tactics and strategies would be the thorn in America's side for the next ten years, because we didn't end them in the first year. Fallujah was eventually taken, but by then the movement had spread.4) The nail in the coffin was an event that I believe was doomed to happen if given enough time. The disgrace of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison by American military is, to me, what happens when a war goes on too long. A very small percentage of troops can do something incredibly stupid and cost the war effort years in the form of outrage by the population. It is ugly, but in my opinion it will happen every time. Every time, that is, that an intense warrior culture is placed in high stress situations for long enough periods of time over the course of years. We are seeing it resurface in the form of Marines and soldiers now getting into trouble for damaging holy texts, defiling bodies and losing it while going on a civilian killing spree. This was the first and was a lot more a case of soldiers being stupid than the reasons listed dealing with those in Afghanistan this last year. In any case, it wouldn't have happened if we had gone in, got our stuff done, and got out.5) Of course I could get into the thousands of arguments on how much this war has cost Americans in terms of good young men and women, as well billions and billions of dollars. This once again is one of my arguments for quick wars. Like I said, I won't get into that. Others have and will cover it quite well enough without my aid.That's my opinion in a brief summary. We had enough reason to go. We should however, have sent more men, better leaders, pacified the people and rebuilt the country in weeks instead of years. We should never have stayed as long as we did, yet we did. Saying that we shouldn't have gone at all is just an easy way to learn nothing from one of the most important events of the modern era. There is a great deal of good that could have been gained or at least salvaged from the events in Iraq and hopefully we could still learn from them to prevent such a wasteful and unsuccessful campaign from happening again. I'm just tired of hearing the rhetoric about how there were no WMD's and there were no terrorists. There is much more to the story and I wish that people would talk about that too. That said, I welcome some debate, such as User's comment below. What I am not interested are the armchair political scientists or one of the 100,000,000 people who say that they were right there with the original 100,000 fighting this from the beginning.Of course, this is only speaking in hindsight.* Iraq and weapons of mass destruction** I wanted to add something in reference to a comment by Vero Kay. As I understood it, she believed that a military force that believes there are people who need to die is not good for a democratic society. It is a good point worthy of discussion, somewhere else on Quora. What I would like to add is that, in spite of our views on death and who deserves it, United States soldiers and the Marine Corps did not kill Saddam. They captured him, gave him medical treatment, a bath, food and fresh clothes before handing him over to the people he ruled for the last few decades. And they killed him... after a trial, with a rope. Once again, the United States and her military did not kill Saddam, they just arranged the meeting between him and the Iraqi people.Thanks for reading!For more answers like this check out Global Outlook by Jon Davis and follow my blog War Elephant for more new content. Everything I write is completely independent research and is supported by fan and follower pledges. Please consider showing your support directly by visiting my Patreon support page here: Help Jon Davis in writing Military Novels, Articles, and Essays.