Iraqi woman being interviewed by CNN describes when Saddam still ruled as the good old days

[NNN0LHI]

Can you imagine that? She said she was afraid to leave her own house now. I sure hope we never get "liberated" by no one.

Don

[Tesla]

1. I know how she feels!

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. I lurve that sig pic

[Dhalgren]

3. K&R, Don. Jesus, how can anyone still support this godawful, murderous mess...

[frogcycle]

4. no surprise there

a repressive regime like Saddam had is tough on the people who get "disappeared" and their families.

people live a life of walking on eggshells, not speaking out about things lest they get targeted

but they probably don't often worry minute-by-minute that random violence will take them out any second at the market, or their kids at school, or driving down the road. It's more of a back-of-the-mind thing, like the nuclear threat during the cold war - or even like the terrorist threat is to us.

The place is so fucked over now the "no easy solutions" phrase is worn out.

not being expert on the local politics and demographics, I can only speculate based on the conflicting news reports and "expert" opinions -

but my sense of what is needed is one of two things:

reconstitute the old regime, with a single faction exercising ironclad autocratic rule over all (not appealing)

send everyone to 'neutral corners' - ie, partition, and relocate. Same thing that happened when Israel was injected into Palestine. It would STILL be contentious, but people within the zones would have some semblance of normalcy, as Israelis do generally. Baghdad would be the same contentious issues as Jerusalem, although it does not have the heavy religious connotations. It would be fragile - a stalemate - but maybe allow a cooling off period (decades?) after which the three states might actually establish diplomatic relations and get along. The biggest deterrents to this, aside from uprooting people from their homes, which has already been widespread and is not uncommon historically (eg: Hmong) appear to be:

• the need to assure that the less oil-rich Anbar province, which would be the core Sunni area, retains a piece of the action. Well, hell, if they can't work out a deal, the Saudis in their own self-interest could subsidize them
  
  
• The fear that Kurds in Turkey and Syria would want to join the northern Kurdish area. Well, hell the Turks and Syrians could work out some sort of arrangement to tolerate more autonomy for "their" Kurds, allow sufficient freedom to interact culturally with their brethren, without an all-out secession.
  
  

OK, maybe those aren't all the issues, and maybe those solutions will be hard to achieve. And within the Shia areas there would still be different competitive factions. Maybe it includes more sub-zones with their own local governments.

But damn it if we could get all those groups (and more) around a table arguing over the details, some variant of that might be achieved.

Despite the seeming intransigence, the simple fact is that at some point self-preservation will overcome much of the insanity. Just as the Arab states and Israel were officially in a continuous state of war for decades until Egypt finally made a move, and North/South Korea are (I think) still officially at war, with a "cease fire" and DMZ, people will act in their own self-interest. Not all individuals, but the societies as a whole. North and South Korea, despite tensions, do not permit their citizens to make suicide bombing raids into each others terrirory. It would not be in their interest to do so.

What needs to happen is to have sufficient cooling off that societal pressures to "behave" can emerge. And that, IMO, is highly unlikely as long as there is insistance on a single central "coalition." Look at how many of us feel about the republican rule of our federal government! Imagine if we knew that they were not only spying on us, "disappearing" some of us, commuting sentences for their pals, etc., but also thought they were behind large-scale attacks on the citizens... oh, wait...

Now take how you feel about the bushcheneymcconnell regime and imagine there were no state governments, and republican militias were roaming around offing democrats!

We are beating our heads against a wall with this "Maliki government." It's not going to work. Even if some sort of accord is reached among its delegates, the folks back home will just assume their "representatives" have deserted them. A US-style government (meaning as prescribed in our Constitution) might some day work there, but the bushcheney perverted abomination thereof is DOA.