Posted by zeugma on June 17, 2006, at 22:33:54
In reply to Re: the rat wiretap trap, posted by Declan on June 17, 2006, at 20:43:36
'hearts and minds' sounds very 60's, but this whole Iraq conflict is time out of joint.
The rhetoric here is constantly, 'we've got to finish what we started, get a viable Iraqi government going.' That sounds fine, until you consider Iraq itself, a relic of the Ottoman empire just as Yugoslavia was a fragment of the Austro-Hungarian empire- unnatural geopolitical entities (their parent empires too, but I doubt the U.S. House of Representatives has time for history lessons). So GWB keeps saying, "We'll stand down when the Iraqis stand up." As if Iraq were a more meaningful entity than the land of the Southern Slavs. He gave a fine speech this week on how oil revenues will pull the country together. Iraq is not Texas on the Euphrates.
-z
poster:zeugma
thread:654613
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20060610/msgs/658174.html