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Comment by jheriko | Hacker News Reader

"It took billions of dollars and years of work to clean up the mess of Saddam Hussein’s failed scorched earth policy."

i'm not sure how this makes sense. the whole point of scorched earth is to create exactly this kind of cost and requirement for work.

i'm also pretty sure it would be more heroic if it wasn't that this whole operation was paid for. its not people doing something nice off their own backs... its people doing their jobs - however heroic or awesome it is to behold from the outside, they are doing what they need to do and what they were trained to do in order to collect their paycheques.

you might think its amazing that they didn't quit, but I'd hazard a guess that these guys knew at least a bit what they were getting themselves in for and were being suitably compensated for the extra difficulties of the job.

... still the photos are very thought provoking.

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I find myself thinking this, from time to time. It's easy to look at a mixed-martial arts fighter, or coal miner, or sweat-shop textile factory worker, or a drug dealer and say: "why not do something less dangerous?"

But the reality is that for many people a safe career is not an easy or even realistic choice. If your options are to live in a ramshackle apartment, never own a car, not have enough money to get married, send your kids to school, bury your family members, or retire, it's harder to turn down a more lucrative and more dangerous career.

I can't pretend to know the motivations of all of the workers, but I am sure that at least some of them made the decision to sacrifice personal health and safety for their future, and their families future, which I think is a reasonable definition of heroism.

If you don't have much of an education, danger often pays.

I'm not sure to what degree I'd put oil rig worker (or even oil firefighter) in the same category as those. A couple of them of pretty much winner take all jobs and a couple are probably "don't have much of a choice" jobs if you live in certain locations. Oil jobs tend to be pretty well-paying blue collar in return for long hours/physically demanding work, week+ on/off schedules, and some level of increased risk (which seems to be concentrated in new workers).

I don't really disagree with your basic point though. I actually worked as an engineer for an offshore drilling company out of school. And, yes, I'm sure there were dangers that the average SV programmer doesn't have but it was good job, paid well for the time, and I only had one relatively minor job-related injury.

The goal of scorched earth is typically to create a military advantage or cause lasting economic damage. The fires didn't keep the Iraqis from losing the war badly, and Kuwaiti production was back up fairly rapidly, so in those respects it failed.

When you see the men completely covered in crude oil, remeber it is this stuff

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-03/that-time-...

I remember at the time respected people in the industry were saying it would take some crazy amount of time to put the fires out - you'd read estimates like twenty years and think "how is that even possible?" Turns out it wasn't.

Saddam was trying to win a war, and in that he certainly failed.

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