At 10:41 AM -0700 10/27/04, James A. Donald wrote:
What worked in Afghanistan was to find some local warlord we could live with, someone in no hurry to get his six pack of virgins, someone who might want to put sacks over the heads of the women of his town, but had no grandiose ambitions to stuff all the women of the world into bags, and then we cut a deal with him - we help him his slay his enemies, he helps us slay our enemies.
Unfortunately the US plan to bring democracy to the middle east, and to preserve Iraq as a unitary state, keeps getting in the way of this sort of deal.
Except, apparently, in Iraqi Kurdistan: <http://www.livejournal.com/users/giantlaser/58953.html> Wherein Ryan Lackey's boss has left Baghdad for a nice hotel upstate... :-) Ryan, apparently remains downtown where all the fun is... <http://www.livejournal.com/users/giantlaser/59447.html> page down to see Ryan in all his former dry-suited Sealand glory... I recommend Tyler <http://www.livejournal.com/users/giantlaser/> and Jayme's <http://www.livejournal.com/users/slownewsday/> Iraq Livejournal blogs as a wonderful example of inadvertant anarchocapitalism in action. Inadvertent, because, of course, they *really* wanna be statists, liberal ones in fact, in spite of evidence all around them to the contrary. I still think they're heroes. Hell, as far as I'm concerned, *Ryan's* a hero at this point. Nick Berg lives. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'