Vibiant

Imagine that there is a kingdom, a large, large kingdom with a huge population and a rather strict government headed by King Charlie.  King Charlie means well, but his is only a semi-barbaric country, as the story goes, and the populance is somewhat hard pressed, the food is terrible, and medicines make you sicker.  Not by any active machinations, just carelessness and ignorance; the pigs for the bacon are fed poor feed, the bacon is laced with bad chemicals, and medications are poorly compounded, out of whatever happened to be on hand, whether it worked or not. 

King Charlie’s government had some structures to take care of this sort of thing, a Ministry of of Victuals and Apothecaries, headed by a decent sort who may have wanted to do the right thing, but that got buried under the piles of gold coins dumped from certain interests who knew that the cheapest ingredients made them the most money, and whether or not they were good for the customer was the customer’s problem, not their.  The Ministry was supposed to protect the people, but but the money won out. 

King Charlie was concerned.  His kingdom exported a lot of food and medicine, and other things, to other kingdoms, and there was King Charlie’s reputation to be considered.   He wants to do the right thing, but he needs to assure send a message to his kingdom, and the surrounding surrounding kingdoms as well.  So, he puts the head of the Ministry of Victuals and Apothecaries to death. 

 This would be a fine story if this was about some kingdom, a long tiome ago, far, far, away, but since this happened just this week, in a country with which we, as a country, do a lot of businesswith, then is seem like such a bright idea.  This whole incident possibly speaks greater voumes about the true nature of Chinese government psychology than all the product recalls and  shoddy toothpaste, cat food, tires, and who knows what else, that have been foisted on both us and their own consumers. 

It’s entirely possible that Iraq will do just fine without us.  There are plenty of countries with insugencuies, Pakistan is one.  Nigeria is another, and weak central governments, like the Democratic Rebublic of Congo, and ethnic tensions, like Turkey, and is threatened by its neighbors, like East Timor.  Those countries certainly don’t thrive, but they do get by, not completely collasping, but making the governmental equivelent of ekeing out an existence.  Perhaps it is too much to supppose that someday, Nigeria will get its shit together, concoct some sort of mandate, and finally make something of the gigantic and varied natural resources that it has in such unbelievable abundance.   Perhaps Musharaf will cease to be a de-facto military dictator, perhaops Central Africans will burn out the corruption that had eaten away at their countries like a cancer. 

 Also, I suppose that it’s possible that I will buy a 787 Dreamliner for personal use, Congress will kick out all the PAC’s, and the President will sign into law a universal health care bill that costs Americans nothing, instead drawing its operating funding from the Pentagon’s budget.  These things might happen, but I doubt it. 

Iraq can get along without us, but it would be a poor existence, probably no better than it was under Saddam, most likely rather worse, or at least equally bad over a larger group of people, instead of the Shia’  and Kurds being terrorized and killed,  as they were under Saddam, everyone would be  terrorized and killed about equally. 

We can make the lives of average Iraqis better, is we guard the oil pipelines like they were Dick Cheney’s heart medicine prescriptions, replaced their raggedy-ass 5o’s era electrical power plants with new ones, and built  oh-my-God-it-no-longer-smells-like-a-third-world-country sewers.  A little capital investment in business wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, either.  We’d still have to patrol, and get blown up by IED’s and not defeat the many heads of the enemy, but we’d at least gtive the pathetically shaky Iraqi government something to stand on, after we left.