I was reading an article on Tariq Aziz, Iraqi foreign minister, and I was struck by the similarity in thoughts that it brought up to ones that I had when I was watching an episode of MTV's Cribs. On the Cribs episode they had Jerry Cantrell's from Alice in Chains home. Cantrell's home wasn't anything spectacular like, say, Master P's, but it seemed quite normal to me. He had a few "rock-star" things, such as gold records and whatnot, but really what the home was was a large suburban home with a bit of land--nothing too flashy. I thought, "hmm, he seems pretty normal."

Aziz sounds that way from the description of his home. As the only Christian in Saddam's ruling party he had a few religious items in the home, but he also had quite a bit of American popular culture items as well. I really think this should fly in the face of the idea that everyone involved in the regime are heartless monsters who know nothing of our way of life and only hate us and want to destroy us. Most of the people in the regime are just people who want to try to make the world not so bad for themselves and their families.

I don't think the Iraqis hate us, but I don't think they love us either. In all actuality, we're just another in a long line of bullies who have conquered their land and are going to set up some type of "government" in a region that consists of various tribes and ethnicities that are constantly fighting for power. The video of jubulant Iraqi citizens feels staged to me, as if they are shouting "Please don't kill us and opress us like everyone else has...We love you." Much like a battered wife, they feel they have nowhere else to go and one abusive husband has replaced the last, but the beatings will continue to be applied.

It also doesn't help that It looked to me like several of the moments relayed on CNN looked staged for the cameras, such as the burning of one image of Saddam, where a man looked like he waited until the camera man was ready before lighting and hurling his molatov cocktail.

We can topple one regime, but the real challenge is keeping another one from doing the same things. One thing a dictator is is stable, and the area in and around Iraq is about to go through some real instability.

One thing I think we should remember is that just because someone is an exile from their country doesn't mean they would make a good political leader if the regime there was toppled. Would anyone want Roman Polanski in government?

Well, less thoughts of geo-political things and now I go and watch Ghost Ship.