POCKET OF RESISTANCE

Noah Feldman in today's New York Times Book Review:

AS for breaking up the rest of the country, [Peter] Galbraith [in The End of Iraq] frankly concedes there is no good solution for Baghdad, with its mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, which includes perhaps a quarter of the whole population of the country.

"Perhaps a quarter of the whole population of the country" -- remember that next time you're told by a war supporter that the violence in Iraq is confined to "just a few provinces," including Baghdad, or that if we just subdue Baghdad, that's the key to peace in Iraq. The numbers I find for the population of Iraq and Baghdad suggest that the city has about 22% of the country's population. Know what you'd have to add up to get that percentage of the U.S. population? You'd have to add up all of California, New York State, and Illinois. Or all of New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.

That's some "pocket of resistance."