on iraq

Hallucinatory. There are no "Iraqis"; there is no "Iraq." Oh, yes, we have a tiny minority to trot out from time to time -- degree-holders from US universities who've assimilated in our terms our 19th-century-European notion of nationhood, and some crypto-Ba'athists whose statism is mostly just Saddamism minus the sociopathy -- that they may warble comfortingly (and, in their cases, sincerely, as far as it goes) about their/our vision of a unitary "Iraq." In addition to these Potemkin spokespersons, we rely for reassuring ourselves that we're not in full cry on the heels of a chimaera on selectively presented effusions from the proverbial and statistically irreducible "man on the street" (or "in the souk" here), who, when asked for a position on the viability of that putative "nation," either (a.) reverts to habits of survival long ingrained by centuries of Ottoman imperial oppression and, in classic Spenglerian fellahin mode, says what the representative of the overlord wants to hear, or (b.) does indeed endorse the future of "Iraq" -- but by that he (and I say "he" advisedly, as women there nowadays are not apt to try putting in their two dinars) intends a tribal/sectarian notion quite different from what's meant in a Western poli sci class. It's all a dumbshow, and both those charged with governing us and those from whom they seek counsel persist in ignorance and self-delusion that has on the evidence of this piece attained a stage beyond recovery.

Get out now. A millennium will not suffice for this deranged project when the humans on whose malleability success depends come from a culture sphere still suffering collective PTSD from Chinggis Khan's sacking of Balkh. All we will ultimately compass in prosecuting this folly further is our own ruin.

— Kevin McFoy Dunn, Atlanta, GA


Hulago and Tamerlane came and went.

The Turks ruled by murder.

Read your history. Either we leave like the Mongols or stay for 800 years like the Turks. Mesopotamia has seen the Persians, the Arabs, the Mongols and the Central Asian Turks and the Ottoman Turks, the British and now US.

— Khaled A Qasem, GA

hillary clinton is fighting the battle al gore never had

...too bad it's 8 years late. Here's Hillary Clinton's take about the housing problems:

[...] a “high-level emergency working group” to devise ways to restructure mortgages at risk of default. And whom might she put on this elite squad? Two people whose track records on mortgages have come in for criticism lately: Alan Greenspan and Robert E. Rubin.

... and now in her own words:

Not only that, but the Fed didn’t act while he was there. But he has a calming influence still to this day on Wall Street — don’t ask me why because I never understand what he’s saying — but nevertheless people respond to that Delphic oracle approach. I think it would be wise to include him. And recently he’s come out, and very smartly so, that we have to deal with housing and maybe we need to have some kind of buyout mechanism for mortgages. So he’s moved on his understanding and depth of the problem — but you know you could pick three others. You just have to have some demonstrable involvement of presidential leadership…

check out the readers' comments, they are well worth it!