'Wild West' Baghdad

The violence today occurred in broad daylight about noon on a busy Baghdad street.

From METimes.com:

Armed men in Iraqi national police uniforms kidnapped 12 workers Monday at the headquarters of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IACCI), interior and defense ministry officials said.

The kidnapping came after a morning of violence across the country left at least 16 people dead, including two senior officers from the military and intelligence services.

Riding in 15 GMC jeeps of a kind used by police, the kidnappers descended on Arassat Street in the commercial heart of Baghdad and led away the head of the chamber and 11 co-workers, an interior ministry source said.

Couldn't all this sad, sick violence be compared to the American Wild West? History relates how the white man and the Cavalry fought the Indians. Indian tribes regularly raided and massacred each other. The cattlemen fought the sheepherders. Ranchers fought the sodbusters. Texans fought Mexicans. In other words, it was uncivilized chaos.

In substance, how different is Baghdad today? I propose it isn't. Baghdad has every group fighting every other group, wildly. Like the American Wild West, you need a course in regional history to understand any of the groups and their conflicts.

The American Wild West was ultimately tamed, civilized through the dedication of incorruptible lawmen and the U.S. Army Cavalry who all shot first, then asked questions. Civilization also needed the spreading of a court system that reliably could convict in the morning and hang in the afternoon. And, of course, it took sustained economic growth. Sprinkled liberally throughout the West, these main elements largely tamed our violent frontier in right around 100 years.

Can the same strategy work in Baghdad? Sure, but it likely won't happen. Western civilization has lost the gonads to aggressively obliterate an enemy. In today's political world, it's more important to compromise and understand. The heroes of America's West just shot the bad guys full of holes. No compromise, no understanding, just bad guys dead.