Is Captain Pierce Right?
Read Francis Fukuyama’s After Neoconservatism. I post. You decide.
posted by Craig Westover | 2/20/2006 05:06:00 PM
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Rich Lowry has been talking about (but not endorsing) what he feels to be the most respectable alternative to nation building: rather than supporting "our son's of bitches", which we know doesn't work, or isolationism (ignoring Islam won't make them ignore us), instead he sees a growing movement of "to hell with them hawks."
The motto: Rubble doesn't make trouble.
That is, the way to deal with a dictator like Saddam is not to cut a deal with him or ignore him, but get in, kill him, do a lot of damage, and get out while leaving a card stating that if the next guy in charge offends us like his predecessor, we will do the same thing again.
That's certainly what I will endorse if I become convinced nation building isn't worth it - something I am anything but willing to concede at this point. Nation building in Iraq, from what I can tell, is working.
I agree with Air Marshall, Fukuyama is asking for results too soon. In fact it could be decades before Iraq emerges as a stable democracy. However, Iraq today is much better for America and the world than it was in 2002 - people forget that Iraq is no longer run by Saddam Hussein, an individual who would be raking in over $40 billion a year in cash to use for his own personal purposes - mostly for bad things.
Yes there is a lot of violence there. But, it is the kid of violence that we can manage, it is not the type of strategic threat of WMD and massive armies and cash that Saddam presented.
The famous argument that "democracy cannot be imposed" is true, except that democracy is always imposed, and is generally almost always imposed through revolution and war with the assistance of a foreign power. Organic democracy is mostly a myth. What we are trying to do is get the democrats in Iraq to impose democracy on their people; i.e. to get their people to participate and come to expect it. They need help. And we should give it to them.
it is already true in Iraq that democratic legitmacy is becoming an important point of discussion among Iraqi politicians both sunni and shia. They argue over who got more votes from what district etc.... The more this becomes engrained the more difficult it will be for a dictator take power outside the democracy.
Hitler took power in Germany by using violence and constant protests and intimidation. That Hitler took power through the vote, is a myth. Hitler never got more than 39% of the vote. These same forces are at work in Iraq. We should fight against them.
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