Rubbing it in - a Kurdish president of Iraq

In days gone past, Saddam Hussein ruled the Sunni Arabs of Iraq. Through brutal genocidal wars, he kept the other 80% of the population of Iraq down and out. Thanks to George W. Bush and a coalition of the willing, this is done with. There's a troublesome 'insurgency' of dead enders making a great deal of trouble and making ever more enemies. There's a guy nmaed Moqtada al-Sadr who tried to take over after Saddam fell, and is now just trying to stay alive. And there's a democratically elected government in Iraq.

To those of us who hate tyranny and love democracy, this is a satisfactory situation. To those who love tyranny and hate democracy, it's a disaster. Those those who shouted "Quagmire? Quagmire!" every step of the way, it's the latest in a string of embarrassments. All they have left is the hope of a repeat of the Tet Offensive secnario in Iraq. And that's not likely to happen. The pieces aren't in place here at home to make that work again. Maybe that's the kind of trick that you can only pull once.

I have to admit I may have been wrong about one thing. I thought it was a bad idea to maintain the fiction that Iraq as a nation means anything, and that it makes no sense to speak of "The Iraqi People" as if there really is such a demographic group. I was against trying to through these peoples together against their will. I was for balkanizing the region into three sections - a nation for the Kurds, a nation for the Shia Arabs, and an occupied zone for the Sunni Arabs for who have been creating all the trouble for several decades now.

Well, Iraq is intact as a nation state with its same old borders, but with an entirely new form of government. And it looks like it just might work. The Shia Arabs and the Kurds are getting along just fine. That's four fifths of the population right there. The remaining fifth is every bit as unhappy, and with every bit as much bad grace, as I would expect. But they're vastly outnumbered now, and those they formerly oppressed seem competent to handle them.

On April 7th,Jalal Talabani was sown in as the duly elected President of Iraq. The interesting thing is although the Shia Arabs outnumber the Kurds three to one, the men they collectively chose is a Kurd. The election went smoothly, and they managed somehow to form a government, and everybody's happy except the dead-enders in the Sunni Triangle. Oh, and of course the sympathizers of those dead-enders. But really, who cares about them?

Oridnarily, I don't gloat at the misfortune of others. But in this case, the losers are such despicable, evil people that I can't help but indulge myself. Their loss is humanity's gain. To rejoice at this good news in any way is to gloat implicitly. May as well be frank about it.

First, let's gloat at Saddam Hussein's expense.
Excerpt:
In an effort to prove to Saddam - who still claims to be Iraq's legitimate leader - that his regime was finally gone, the jailed ex-President was furnished with a television to watch the parliamentary vote at a US top-security prison at Baghdad Airport.

"I decided that Saddam and the 11 others [jailed regime leaders] will watch it on the television," Bakhtiar al-Amin, Iraq's interim Human Rights Minister, said. "There will be a place in jail for Saddam and the 11 to watch the TV to understand their time is finished."

Now, an illustration of just why we call them "dead-enders"
Excerpt:
A man who was an intelligence officer in the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein committed suicide after news that Jalal Talabani was sworn in as President of Iraq.

Captain Hatem Ahmad al-Shallal shot himself in the village of Daqouq, 60 kilometres south of Kirkuk, the source quoted al-Shallal's relatives as saying.

The officer had been "in an abnormal hysterical state" since Mr Talabani was sworn in as President last Thursday.

"He could not accept the idea of a non-Arab as President of an Iraqi state," the source quoted the relatives as saying.

Finally, let's watch the hypocrites at Common Dreams squirm and whine through quotes from cherry-picked proxies.
Excerpts:
"I call it canned democracy offered by America, or even worse and more dangerous, the forbidden fruit that the devil tempted Adam with."
...
"This is a farce, everything is pre-ordained and pre-arranged before lawmakers convene," said Jarba, who, as a chief of the Shammar tribal confederation which straddles Iraq's ethnic divide, was elected as an MP for the Shiite alliance even though he is Sunni.

I say:
You can't please everyone. But fortunately there are some people not worth pleasing, and the rest you *can* please. The Left are beside themselves. That Ba'athists are offing themselves. And al Qaeda are currently eating their own in Saudi Arabia.

Who could ask for anything more?


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