This article in the Weekly Standard (hat tip DD) describing the rehabilitation for former insurgents and how they are being redeployed as relatively functional persons is one more suggestion that politics is moving into the "post Iraq war" era. I use the phrase advisedly because combat in that country is likely to continue for some time. But as the diplomatic crisis between Iraq and Turkey over the Kurdish secessionists emphasizes, it is starting to become just another normal messed up Middle Eastern country with this crucial difference: it has gone through occupation, an abortive civil war and an ideological revolution all in about four years time.
George H. Bush lost to Bill Clinton after winning Desert Storm and Winston Churchill to Clement Atlee two months after the surrender of Nazi Germany. Sometimes people react to the end of a crisis with a nostalgic yearning for their old messed-up lives. The crisis of course, never truly passes. It just changes form.
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