Unchanging Avatar.
I had hoped that the one bright side of this war was that we could at least install a better government. I was wrong.
Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.
Beware the Crazy Man.
Iraq is too unstable and artificial to be run normally. It was inevitable that the government would become authoritarian. We just switched it from a minority oppressing a majority to the majority oppressing a minority.
Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...
I don't know if I even care anymore..
Beware the Crazy Man.
If not for Baghdad and the immediate surrounding area (and the history behind the area with Babylon and Mesopotamia), partition would have happened back in '05, I'd wager. Give the Sunni areas over to Jordan, make Kurdistan independent contingent on moving ALL Kurds to the new state so that claims to Turkish soil end, and give Basra and the surrounding environs to Kuwait.
Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...
Agreed. We lost the battle to mold Iraq into (a) competent nation(s) the moment we took the three-way partition solution off the table.
Iraqi Kurdistan essentially went ahead and did it anyway from the beginning; they are now a fully functioning mini-country that views the rest of Iraq as a hopeless wasteland that they unfortunately share a border with.
Meanwhile, the central and southern portions of the country have been engaged in a sort of insurgent cold war between new government loyalists, Sunni insurgents backed primarily by Syria, and Shia insurgents backed by Iran and the Sadrist movement. The latter made huge gains in the recent elections and has usurped a large number of military and government posts.
Fun times.
So the Kurds are doing alright? Good on 'em, I always liked those guys.
Kurdistan was so successful in going into quarantine mode from the rest of the country that their territory is safe enough to vacation in.
Anwalt der Verdammten
...Well this isn't what I'd call a suprising development. :P
The 5 geek social fallacies. Know them well.
Some Guy
A government installed by the U.S. turns out to be as bad as the one that came before? Gee, that's never happened before.
Groovy.
Beware the Crazy Man.
I wonder if the rumors of the Mid east protests spreading to Iraq would be because of this. Hmm....
Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...
Don't know if this was ever a thread before, but apparently Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki has been caught running a secret prison...again, after promising to stop last year.
The story.
Discuss.
Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.