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Thoughts from San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture
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November 14, 2003
Let Iraquis get to it By Tom Smith This from the WSJ (registration required) seems right to me. The constitutionalist nation-building version of US occupation always struck me as pie-in-the-sky. I'm afraid the model for defeating the Baathists and OBL types in Iraq now is more like getting Escobar in Colombia than founding a city upon a hill. (And even the American revolution was a lot nastier than it gets credit for.) The Iraquis know where the bad guys are and how to root them out. US infantry can't do that job and we don't want Delta Force or the CIA to do it, at least not openly. It will not be pretty. It was not pretty in France after they finally threw out the Nazis, at least if I remember The Sorrow and the Pity correctly. Destroying the remnants of the old regime is job one, then it will be time for the Iraquis to worry about the finer points of democracy. Whether Iraq can emerge as an example of democracy working in the Middle East remains to be seen. I am probably more skeptical on that point than other Right Coasters. I will be happy enough if we've stopped them from working on cutting edge bio-weapons. (On that subject, Judith Miller has a touching story of Iraqui talent scouts scouring the former Soviet Union for bio-weapons experts, asking such questions as "Would it be possible to design a virus that would only kill Jews?") |