Iraq is now a safari run amok, where there lurk soldiers, guards of various companies, mercenaries of variegate extractions, militias of any religious or political ideology, as well as many versions and perversions of al-Qaida mujahidin. All of them hunt the poor ordinary Iraqi dreaming only of a normal life, at least as normal as it could have been under the cruel Saddam. Saddam could handle a gun, as we know, but, from the prospective of the game, one hunter who is more or less predictable is better than many who shoot indiscriminately at anything that moves.

Day after day, Baghdad is stained in fresher blood than it had ever been before. Going to buy food, searching in desperation for the few medicines left, looking for drinkable water, all these also mean facing possible death for the ordinary Iraqi. An Iraqi friend of mine, with a dark sense of humour, recently asked me if I thought that, with the right campaign, the WWF might consider to include Iraqis among the species facing extinction. This is an example of the trust that Iraqi people can be expected to have in the power of the absentee UN to save them from this collective sacrifice to force-imported democracy and freedom. Indeed, a higher number of Iraqis, year after year, are asking whether democracy is not really the deadly Western disease that the more radical preachers describe to them, a rebounding Black Death instead of a legitimate political process for achieving ultimate freedom that grants happiness and economic success. Continue reading →