NYT's excellent Robert F. Worth (husband of a friend of mine) reports that-- if I may borrow from "Full Metal Jacket" and paraphrase Worth-- the situation in Iraq is a sh*t sandwich, and we've all got to take a bite.
Everyone in Baghdad seems to be either in the Green Zone, blowing up civilians, or is a civilian getting blown up in a line for a job, kerosene, or whatever.
As I said about two months ago:
Split the country up already. Let the Baathists keep Baghdad, give the oil to the Shia and Kurds, keep around 30,000 troops in the Kurdish part to prevent civil war and discourage them from pissing off Turkey.There's going to be massive dislocation, but, I mean, a committment to creating a democracy that incorporates the Sunnis and the Shiites is looking pretty naive.
I don't think Iraqis are stupid.
And an Iraqi who voted for someone who's espousing liberal democracy &c., rather than protecting members of his sect from mosque-bombing fanatics, would have to be stupid.
Democracy among groups that don't want to murder each other seems moderately feasible, but this? Narishkeit.
Hmm. Looking back on the page, I see I've strayed into politics.
Fine, then.
I do have a less political question for this post--
Has anyone noticed that the ratio of dead:wounded in these bombings always seems to be about 1:4.5?
Any grisly theories to explain it?
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