I wrote the title before I remembered the popular Iraqi TV show, broadcast from outside Iraq of course. It is "Hurry Up, He's Dead", a break-up of the Arabic word for "The Government".
I also came across "The Last Iraqi Insurgency", New York Times, April 18, 2004, a recap of the British occcupation of Iraq starting in 1920. The last British soldier left in 1955.
I thought about this entry while reading "Carriers of Conflict" in the November issue of The Atlantic (sorry, only a preview is available to non-subscribers). However, the accompanying map is available.
Over 700,000 Iraqis have left Iraq for Jordan, 450,000 for Syria, and 54,000 for Iran. That's out of a CIA 2006 estimate of over 27 million population. What would we think if over 12 million U.S. citizens fled to Canada or Mexico?
But these refugees are not the stereotypical mother and child. They include many who are willing and able to fight. They will not only make forays back into Iraq, but they take over camps and other refugee settlements, pushing aside traditional tribal leaders. They also destablize the host countries. The author compares the Iraqi exodus to the Palestinian diaspora. Consider what happened in Lebanon and Jordan.
I think we might call the Iraq War "Bushdora's Box". "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - George Santayana.
