Final Historian

Great, another Utopian dream. There will be peace on Earth when humanity ceases to be a upon it. Violence is inherent in human nature, its encoded into our DNA, and will always exist. State sponsored violence can be reduced, democratic government is perhaps the best means of doing so, but you can't get a rid of it entirely. Its simply not human.

My only problems with Baker are his overly close friendship with the Saudis and some supposed latent anti-semitism. Fortunately, that shouldn't prevent him from helping Iraq solve its debt problems. Many of them are odious debts anyway, so that should help in the long run.

I have a question: What are the major Iraqi political parties at the moment? Or are there too many to tell which ones will become major? I am wondering because I would like to know if Iraq would have a single Shia fundamentalist or Theocratic party, or several. I also would like to know where the Iraqi "center" is, or if it even has one. I suspect its too hard to tell at the moment, as the Iraqi people aren't used to making their own political decisions.

We want your resources, yeah, thats it. And if we want that, why are we rebuilding schools, setting up a police force, fixing hospitals... need I go on?

This "Ummah uniting to fight the infidels" stuff is garbage. The US occupation is temporary, we WANT to leave. The more the Bathists and Islamists resist, the longer the US will have to remain. So if you want the US to leave, just let us rebuild the country and help set up a democratic government.

There is no easy answer to this quesiton. The United States hasn't solved it yet, so perhaps Iraqis could do it for us. I for one find myself in a troubled position, as I believe strongly in classical liberal theory(Locke, Jefferson, Madison), while at the same time I recognize as a student of history that too much permissiveness in society leads to decadence. This in turns leads to the corruption of the elites and the eventual downfall of society. This is what doomed the Roman Empire. Sometimes I suspect that "Western Civilization" is heading down the same path.