If you’ve ever been to a country that has a problem with feral dogs, you’ll know that dealing with wild dogs can be a total pain in the arse because they’re unpredictable. They’re mostly scared of people, because, as scavengers, they’re chased away with sticks and shouts. Other times, with children, or if they feel threatened, they’ll bite, and in packs they can attack. They can carry rabies and present a public health issue. Under Saddam Hussein the infrastructure in Iraq was held together with bubblegum, duct tape, and tyranny. After the invasion, the coalition political leaders, those so keen on war, had no decent plan, at all, to deal with the aftermath. Rather depressingly, it’s been repeated by politicians calling for a pull-out of Iraq; with no detailed plans to deal with what happens next.

During the invasion, and its aftermath, all of the pest control, public services, and public service infrastructure, were destroyed, looted, or both, here’s what Donald Rumsfeld had to say at the time:

“Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things … stuff happens”

The destruction of public services was allowed to happen. Simple things like pest control were looted out of existence - and worse was to come. The people who dealt with practical things, the people running ministries, what was left of them, emigrated to neighbouring states like Jordan and Syria, or were fired in the de-Baathification of the Iraqi state. As a result wild dogs are a bigger problem in Iraq today, than they were prior to the invasion. And they were a problem prior to the invasion. Tossing a puppy off a cliff isn’t the best form of pest control, but placed in context, it’s different from someone buying a puppy in a pet-shop specifically to toss it off a cliff. It’s still cruel and it’s still wrong, but given the situation soldiers are in, dealing with the arse-end of geopolitics, it is, to my mind, forgivable. Many people seem to be more incensed at a soldier tossing a dog off a cliff than they are about the situation soldiers have been left to clean up.