Before the recent protests, I hadn't thought about what happened to the Green Zone after the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Apparently, it just became the fortress where Iraqi politicians holed up just like U.S. military commanders did before them, a forbidden city on the Tigris. Chalk that up to yet another terrible legacy the U.S. invasion left for the Iraqi people. For all out talk about installing a democracy in that country, there is nothing less democratic than having an entire city within a city, walled off from everywhere else, that is open only to the ruling class.
Hey and remember when the Bush Administration tried to rename it the "International Zone", to avoid the implication that they were only creating one small safe area in all of Iraq? (If the Green Zone is green, that means the rest of Iraq is red.) The "International Zone" makes even less sense when the place is filled with Iraqi politicians than it did when it was filled with foreign militaries.
Hey and remember when the Bush Administration tried to rename it the "International Zone", to avoid the implication that they were only creating one small safe area in all of Iraq? (If the Green Zone is green, that means the rest of Iraq is red.) The "International Zone" makes even less sense when the place is filled with Iraqi politicians than it did when it was filled with foreign militaries.
