Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

There is a solution to IEDs. We have known it for centuries, but instead we look to technology.

I saw this post recently about a research project that will have lasers find IEDs. Neat technology. I like technology; I guess that is why I have three engineering degrees and view the web everyday looking for new technologies.

That written, let’s move to the real solution for IEDs. IED planters don’t like Americans. That is why they bury IEDs under roads and detonate the IEDs when Americans arrive.

IEDs lose their effectiveness when the people who live next to those roads tell Americans, “Hey, stop. There is an IED buried here. And I will take you to the house of the guys who planted it.”

This doesn’t happen because the people who live next to the road like the IED planters more than the Americans. Let’s see, the Americans are in a country where the local folks don’t like Americans. Perhaps the Americans are in the wrong country.

Of course this is a simplistic solution, probably the most simple solution anyone could suggest. I believe, however, that it works. We don’t hear much about this solution in the media because it isn’t interesting, not nearly as interesting as a billion dollar program to invent IED-sniffing lasers and IED-spotting satellites and other technologies.

Now and then, we will hear about some person who lives next to the road telling the Americans the locations of the IEDs and the IED planters. Those people like the Americans more than the IED planters. Those people solve the IED problem.