Arrian: Short of death squads, do you have any ideas about a reasonably just solution to this problem of the minority not settling for their proper share of power?
Focus on local elections, rather than national elections, rebuild a nonsectarian civil society, through supporting, i.e. labor unions, etc. In the national election, I'd look at a few possibilities: give the Sunnis a default 10-15% of Parliament if they boycott the election as expected (to keep them from feeling more marginalized) or have people vote for individual candidates, rather than top-down party lists (so the election would be more about local, pragmatic concerns, rather than sectarian rivalres). The bottom line is that democracy is a process, not an event, and that pinning all our hopes on a single national election, coming far too late, after we've alienated the Sunni population through that idiocy in Fallujah in addition to all the other incompetence we've beeen involved in for the past year and a half, ain't going to work.
Death squads are morally despicable and not an option for a just soicety. Period. And practically, they're not going to rebuild a democratic culture, and they almost certainly would make the problem worse (see collective punishment in Fallujah).
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