Passports

Op-Ed from Canadia. Technorati Tags: Aga Khan, Democracy

According to today’s New York Times, Brandon Mayfield, the American convert to Islam [I’m painfully aware that nationality has nothing to do with religion, but that’s the way it’s being reported], who was detained yesterday for involvement in the Madrid train bombings of March 11, may not in fact be involved. The relevant graf is: The law enforcement officials said they were afraid that Mr. Mayfield, who is originally from Kansas, might become a fugitive if he knew he was under suspicion. So monitoring that was just getting started was abruptly halted. Mr. Mayfield was arrested before investigators had fully…

A friend and mentor pointed out this article from the International Herald Tribune on splitting up Iraq. I thought with the recent capture of Saddam, now might be a good time to talk about the implications of our long-term strategy in Iraq. Broadly speaking we either keep the country whole, or we divide it. If we keep it whole, we have a few different approaches to keeping it together: Impose our rule, like the IGC; let loose a real representative democracy, putting the Shi’ah in charge; set-up a power sharing scheme, like Lebanon; some confederation of autonomous regions.