Diplomacy is all about ‘gamesmanship’, and those wishing to point it out can also then point it out on our side and, indeed, on the side of any Nation on this planet.

The current government in Iraq is scrambling and hard to try and get something done because something is being done without them: local control of the towns and provinces is returning. Nary a national government to be seen, either. There are now a number of mayors with a ‘can do’ attitude on clearing the streets, getting businesses up and running, ensuring that the infrastructure works as best as they can… and then looking at what the national government should be doing for them, but isn’t. Had to be quite a bit of a shock to the panjandrum of food distribution in Sadr City to have a Sunni mayor come into his office with US and Iraqi Army officers to get food that was due them. Had to hand it over, too, but the paperwork took a few hours to fill out… now Baqubah announces the re-opening of its flour mills so that Iraq can start producing its own flour and other goods depending upon that. Ramadi is re-opening factories, putting folks to work, getting things running and securing their city.

The US is one thing, and ‘gamesmanship’ with the Congress is fully comprehensible. If a few mayors start to arrive in Baghdad to demand what their people deserve as put forth by their national government… ahhh… that is something entirely other now, isn’t it? You can’t do much in the way of ‘gamesmanship’ with that, especially when they start asking for the money, food and, oh BTW, the election laws so that local parties can run to govern the provinces. Congress and the US leaving are one worry, but competent mayors who have been overseeing the rebuilding and re-invigoration of their cities and that are renouncing terrorism and killing them off?

Faster, please!

We do forget our citizen soldiers take a specific view of the world with them, and then, apparently, adapt it to different circumstances. Will Iraq be a ‘Jeffersonian democracy’, nope! Will it be something that holds different governments accountable to different power structures? Ahhhhh… thats the question now, isn’t it? Because these national parties are seeing that they have very little ‘grass roots’ and that, somehow, the grass is now growing. Add in the changes to the oil revenue sharing due to the reserves now found in the Sunni Arab provinces and things will get interesting there.

Personally, I really don’t think much of a powerful central government. Much prefer the kind accountable to the people of the nation involved. Someday in America we may get that, but the trend is in the opposite direction. Someday we will remember what federalism and democracy are about…