The Cherry Orchard

Now that several leading Republican politicians (and many more smart Republican voters) have abandoned the inane Bush/Cheney position that USA troops must stay the course in Iraq, it seems likely that American forces will begin pulling out soon (how soon? I wish I knew). This is far the end of our troubles in Iraq, or Iraq’s troubles. The hard work will get harder before it gets easier, and some frightening issues loom. We must pull out without leaving causing a massive refugee crisis that could lead to further horrors, privations and invitations to genocide.

As we’ve observed elsewhere on this site, major historical acts of genocide from Turkey to the Ukraine to Nazi Germany to the Chinese heartland to Rwanda have almost always been politically motivated. The “madman” theories that blame past disasters on obsessive politicians (Hitler) or mindless marauding gangs (Rwanda) invariably miss their mark. Genocides happen, sadly enough, because they benefit the governments that support them (I don’t want to repeat my past writings on this topic here, but if you find this formulation unconvincing please visit the articles in the “genocide” category here, where I explore this in more detail).

Here’s why this is relevant now: the territorial and economic battles between Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions over control of Iraq (and Iraq’s oil wealth) will probably result in some type of either formal or (more likely) de facto partition. A national partition will quickly lead to a refugee crisis (as it did in, say, the creation of Pakistan from the partition of India). A refugee crisis invariably involves the type of chaos that can lead to genocide. It’s all too easy to see the worst-case scenarios that could emerge in Iraq in the next couple of years, and it is the entire world’s responsibility — not just the USA’s, and not just Iraq’s — to make sure this doesn’t happen.

What can we do to help? As I’ve said so often in these pages before, we can begin by improving the quality of our national debate on the future of Iraq. This Huffington Post article by Thomas de Zengotita helps by pointing out the flaw in the oft-spoken Bush-Cheney line that the current Iraqi government needs to “step up” to solve the country’s problems. The condescending idea that Iraq’s inability to govern itself is due to a lack of national character or organization is pure fiction. Iraq can’t govern itself because its people are allied along Shiite/Sunni/Kurdish lines rather than national lines (and have always been) and will choose to fight for the sectarian causes they have been raised to believe in rather than for a “unity government” that they do not trust.

Unfortunately, not many people will read or understand articles like Thomas de Zengotita’s, and the idea that we can allow “nature to take its course” in Iraq while they “figure out how to govern themselves” is all too widely believed.

I don’t know how we can avoid a vicious refugee crisis in a post-USA Iraq, but this is the question we all need to ask, and we need to ask it now. And let’s just skip the simplistic answers, because they are not going to help.

I’m with Sully, and everybody else. What are we waiting for?

But I also wanted to post my promise that I will get back into writing more substantial and wide-ranging posts here. I’ve just been too busy to think straight, but you (my loyal readers) deserve more than quickie news blurbs here, and I intend to get this blog back on track starting, like, real soon.

I thought Kevin Wall, Al Gore and friends did a great job putting together the Live Earth concert. Musically, the highlights of the TV broadcast included the Beastie Boys, Madonna (a killer set), UB40, Linkin Park, Macy Gray, Roger Waters and his flying pig, Melissa Etheridge, the Police with Kanye West, and Yusuf Islam singing “Peace Train”.

I thought the interspersed short films were quite good as well. I know it’s fashionable to scoff at these concerts (it’s probably even more fashionable to scoff at them than it is to attend them) but I bet a lot of people learned new things about environmental issues yesterday.

I’m trying to keep a level head about the commutation of Scooter Libby’s jail sentence. Doesn’t seem fair to me. But I guess it’s Libby’s former boss, not Libby himself, who should be in jail.