How easy it is to forget that Saddam's solution to the problem of stability and unity was to wage a more or less continuous campaign of internal warfare against the Kurds, the Shi'ites and dissenting Sunnis; gassing the Kurds, draining the Marshes.
the "good old days" that so many commentators, unaccountably afflicted with amnesia, hanker for already. Grim notes its replacement, the step-by-step emplacement of a laws, local councils, community governnance.
The challenges facing the Government of Iraq -- solving the Three Problems -- are daunting enough. But what is currently beyond their power to shape is the international context within which they must face these issues. From Lebanon through Saudi Arabia, down onto southern Iraq, Iran is dispatching its agents, deploying its proxies. The task of facing them falls to the United States, if Washington can persuaded to acknowledge the problem.
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