Tagged

I will shortly be doing this:

The Rules:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same.

....with the exception of #5. I hate imposing on people. So if anyone wishes to self-tag on this go ahead. I'm too.... well, deferential I suppose to try and make you. :-)

As to that sentence:

One of the critical elements of a stable government is (relative) security for its leaders - Iraqi "democracy" will not be able to survive attacks like this of any frequency - if Shiites start blaming Sunnis, or either look at the Kurds as agents of this sort of thing, the whole deal is off.

Funny how slowly things can change in the world. I remember once I cracked open a yearbook from 1969 or thereabouts. I did this for a school project in the 1980s. The first article I read was about world leaders being outraged by a coup in Libya, carried out by one Moammar Qadaffi. And of course, in the 1980s, world leaders spent a lot of time being outraged by Moammar Qadaffi, as at that point in time he was involved in quite a lot of mischief and terror. The headlines hadn't changed much.

So I can't say I'm surprised that my sentence reflects today, too, in a sense - in fact, so little has changed that maybe I am shown to be wrong. The effort to bring about democracy is still struggling along a year and a half later. Not truly succeeding, perhaps, but neither is the whole deal off.