It's Clueless Git Time!


DOD: Iran tries to derail Iraqi democracy

So. American-style democracy is the One True Path, is that it?

I'm sorry, it's getting really hard to tell extremist bad guys from the good guys these days.

How about -- bear with me, here, I know it's a revolutionary idea -- asking the Iraqi people what kind of government they'd like? For all I know, the current structure just needs a new president. (Much like my own country...but I digress.)


Y'know, as a rather more detailed side comment: the first time I heard the the US is planning on splitting Iraq up into 3 administrative regions I was

a. appalled;
b. not surprised that this would seem logical to a desk-jockey half the world away. "There, that's tidy, isn't it?"

B., I hope, is self-explanatory. A., however, is apparently less so. What happens when you lump together regions and associations that may have very little in common beyond geographical proximity and force them into a new province?

They're going to point at each other and argue, or worse. "Oh, I'm not in his group. No, no no. He's a fill-in-the-blank."

Why is it necessary to modify the country's existing systems into a new structure that literally is the result of some poor schmuck at the Pentagon drawing a few lines on the map of a place they know nothing about? That's just begging for internecine squabbling.

Why is it necessary to recreate the idea of region or province or state or county with new boundaries?

Why cannot the previously-existing 18 governorates (muhafazat, singular - muhafazah) of Al Anbar, Al Basrah, Al Muthanna, Al Qadisiyah, An Najaf, Arbil, As Sulaymaniyah, At Ta'mim, Babil, Baghdad, Dahuk, Dhi Qar, Diyala, Karbala', Maysan, Ninawa, Salah ad Din, and Wasit continue to exist as such?

One of these things seems a hell of a lot easier and sensible than the other.