The Irish Solution
The ultimate solution to Iraq’s violence and that of the broader Middle East may prove to be the Irish solution. They kill, and they kill, and they kill, and one day, the people just get tired of all the killing, and push for it to end. The Los Angeles Times reports Sunni clerics reaching out to Shiites. Iraq, as bloody as Bosnia, far bloodier than Ireland, is probably a long, long way from an Irish solution. In both Ireland and Bosnia, as savage as those places seemed in their time, for all the murder committed in those places, there was enough vestigal respect for order to prevent total chaos. But even in a place like Iraq, you never know how these things can take hold, and how suddenly today’s immutables can become yesterday’s news. As a Kashmiri Muslim separatist explained to me a few years ago, “There once was a great Soviet Union. There once was a Berlin Wall … ” This was a guy who had leapt from a five-story building and had broken most of the bones in his body when he crashed through a roof below to escape the Indian security forces. This was a guy with a lot of faith that was not always entirely borne out. But he was right. There once was a great Soviet Union.
Again, I look at al-Sadr’s people balking on their threat of pulling out of the government. There is room for leverage there. This AP article suggests al-Maliki is facing a growing challenge from disgruntled Sunni lawmakers, but the report is too superficial to indicate how serious that is, and whether it might have any positive or negative ramifications.
I’m still looking for Iraqi blogger views on the events of the past couple of days, but none of the sites I’ve seen are updating. Comment if you’ve seen anything noteworthy, thanks.
Meanwhile, if you need a laugh, here is the Independent’s Middle East jackass, I mean columnist, Robert Fisk, who appears to be seriously comparing Bush in Iraq 2006 to Hitler in Berlin 1945. Yeah. It’s exactly like that.
Jack Army, who is rapidly turning into one of my favorite milbloggers, reports on this very relevant conversation about politics with his Iraqi counterparts. Via Thunder Run, another great milblog.
Topics: Uncategorized
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:38 pm on Thursday, November 30, 2006
2 Responses to “The Irish Solution”
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December 1st, 2006 at 10:01 am
Fisk compares the mental state of denial using many other historical figures as examples.
Have you read his book The Great War for Civilisation?
I believe that Fisk is right only he has not been all inclusive enough. We can pretty well see that the majority of the worlds leaders are ‘in denial’ about the real state of global affairs.
December 1st, 2006 at 2:35 pm
You can generalize this “Irish principle” beyond the Emerald Isle, there, boss.