Let the People Divide Themselves

Everybody except maybe the Bush administration is drowning in the seemingly endless deluge of stories about death and destruction in Iraq. (Fortunately for Bush, there is Justice to worry about.) But when does it become acceptable for those in power to ask if we have been looking at the problem the wrong way? The US Government and the US media clearly define success by whether there is peace within the post-colonial borders. "Can we avoid all-out civil war?"

When do we consider, however, that the West's historical division of the region by borders drawn on a map may have been at the root of the current issues? The West wants folks the world over to be excited by, and loyal to, a map and a flag (and a finance ministry and a UN seat), just the way the West has been since Westphalia. Is it possible, however, that other regions of the world may naturally prefer to divide themselves differently? That there may be other measures - say religious, business, or familial - that other people prefer to consider in determining who is "one of us"?

By introducing wealth along with its means for dividing, the West has enticed people everywhere to adopt, or at least to appear to adopt, the legitimacy of the Western style of division. But how many deaths will it take before we consider that the world may not yet have truly bought the West's global map? That systems empowered by Western wealth will break down, and when that happens, people's innate means for division will re-awaken, often wreaking havoc after having been suppressed and supplanted? I say until we wrestle thoroughly with this possibility, we will never even understand the problems, much less commence a successful solution in Iraq.