S.S.: Well as I was saying, we all admire your eagerness to get on with our agenda in the Mid East, but we really can't afford to leave Iraq and go after Iran until things settle down a lot more. We need the government there to be in place. The problem is that the three major groups can't agree on anything important. We also need to keep all three of them happy or we end up with even worse problems than we have now. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any obvious or easy solution to the situation. We can't take over governing the country again; that will tie up far too many troops and lose us what allies we have there already.
T.H.: Well, so what is their problem, anyway? We got rid of Saddam, we gave them the vote, what more do they want? Some people just aren't very grateful, are they? They should just be happy with the fact that we're letting them have their own country. It’s s not like they're civilized or anything; good God, half of them don't even drink.
R.H.M.: If I may T.H., Sure Shot, thank you. The problem is sir, I don't think they're ungrateful; it's just that we're talking about two separate sects and one group who are a different race altogether. While the Sunnis and the Shiites are both Muslim, they practice different types and follow different leaders.
T.H.: Like Catholics and Protestants, you mean?
R.H.M.: Very astute sir, quite similar. Plus the Kurds are a different people completely and have wanted independence from Iraq for ages. Even though there is one group in the majority, there are enough of the other two to create problems. On top of that, each group has experienced discrimination at the hands of the other.
Saddam was a Sunni, so even though they are a minority, they got all the favourable jobs and treatment. Now they are frightened that the Shiites will want revenge. The Kurds, on the other hand, have been hunted and killed by the other two groups, and really don't trust either of them."
T.H.: You could say they are like a Muslim Jew, then couldn't you? Catholics and Protestants may not get along, but we all hate Jews, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Article comments
1 - Dave Nalle
Your 'satire' paints a strangely positive portrait of President Bush. I'm at a loss.
Dave
2 - Nancy
Could it be sarcasm?
3 - Richard Marcus
You know as I was writing it, I realized that the portrait I was painting of George wasn't unsympathetic. I don't have a problem with that, he isn't evil incarnate, he's just stupid. I think he should have sayed running the Texas Rangers and kicking back with a bottle of Bourban and the whole world would have been a lot happier.
The truely dangerous people in Washington are Dick Chenny and a bunch of others who Chenny brought with him.
Of course having George suggest partition as a solution to anything, is also indicitive of someone who completly ignores the lessons of history when making decisions. Look at the success rate of courtries who have had partition imposed on them for dealing with inter faith problems, and you can see how bad an idea that really is.
The aim of the piece was to a)comment on how unprepared the Administration was to deal with "post war" Iraq, and b)their williness to repeat the mistakes of history, without realizing the consequences.
George is an easy target, so I figure the subtle approach was better, just play up his country buffon aspects and leave him in there with the sharks.
So you're both right.
cheers
Richard Marcus
4 - Dave Nalle
But that's just it, Richard. Your portrayal of Bush doesn't make him sound stupid. It makes him sound lazy, but sort of clever and using the country buffoon personna to manipulate the professional politicians. I suspect your satire is actually a lot closer to the truth than you realize. And of course the partition idea might just be a good, viable solution to the Iraq problem.
Dave
5 - Richard Marcus
Well now that is a conumdrum isn't it? Well that's the good thing about fiction, it can be interpreted in so many ways. I guess in my eyes the portrayel was negative, becuase of his preocupations, but you are right I did make it look like he was manipulating the manipulators...which in some ways I guess is alright because they frighten me far more than he does. If he did nothing but sit back and watch baseball as preisident we'd all feel more comfortable, as long as he got rid of the psycohos around him.
I still think Geral Ford was the best modern president. He did abosolutly nothing except come across like a friednly guy who was very human and a lousy golfer. His advisors were harmless so America was able to heal after the divisons of Nixon.
Utah Phillips once said that the country is safer when the President does nothing, its when he starts having ideas we're all in danger.
Sorry I'm wandering away from my point, if I had one, I might be stalling. I think what it comes down to is what your opinion of partition is, it's never worked very well in the past, it usually ends up in massive ethnic strife and border wars. The only time that I know of it working was when a country was able to decide on it's own to split. The Slovaks and the Cszechs dividing into their separate states worked so far.
Any partitions that have been imposed by an outside power have been doomed to incessent violence.
Do you really think that Turkey is going to allow an independant Kurdish State on their border? Is the first flaw in partition that springs to mind. Will Iran and the other Shites allow the minority Sunni to survive? How do you deal with the displacement of thousands of peoples from one area to the other? Do you really want to uproot familes who have lived in the same part of the country for hundreds of year just because their religion no longer makes it allowable for them to live there.
That's why I don't think partition will work and is the solution of someone who (no offence meant to you) who is looking for an easy answer to a question that doesn't have one. It's been like this administration's policies on everything, in my opinion, simplistic without thinking of the long term effects...
Anyway that's my defence and I'm sticking to it, he may be likeable but he's an idiot...
cheers
Richard