Okay, I admit that I haven't read the whole piece yet, but I have been thinking about it, and a parallel that keeps coming to mind is Japan. No, obviously we didn't invade Japan to recreate it in our image (let's put aside the black ships for a moment). We bombed the shit out of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because we'd been attacked, and because we had these new weapons we were terribly curious to see in action.

And the weird thing is, if you talk to some Japanese, they believe we did the only thing that would stop them from continuing to attack us. Regrettable but necessary. Sixteen years after first reading that, I still can't get my head around it.

Japan's response to the bombings and the Occupation was to decide to out-West the West. It's really amazing, if you look at how swiftly everything changed after the war, especially if you remember that Japan had managed to remain largely unchanged until the Meiji era. They rebuilt, they modernized, they developed a reputation for excellence in science, technology, and automaking, among other things. In a word, they flourished.

Which makes me wonder, and my pacifist nature makes this very uncomfortable, if there are in fact some times that you've got to break some eggs. And yes, there are changes I'd love to see in Iraq, many of them related to the lives of women. I do find myself wondering if our incursion there might eventually produce a positive change.

Although all those dead Iraqis makes me think not. And Iraq is not pre-war Japan.
 

Indri, I believe, if you're comparing the Middle East to Japan, there is a fundamental flaw in assuming that anything even vaguely similar may occur. Japan has been, for centuries, a nation that embraces and adopts outside culture, digests it, and uses its own variant of it. From the cooking of the Portuguese, to the written language of the Chinese, to the business models of The West, we can see how outside influence has consistently shaped the nature of the Japanese personae.

The Middle East, on the other hand, is famous for retaining cultural imperviousness in the face of the rest of the world's changes. Though much of the technology available may be employed, how many scientific or cultural advances have come from there?

Here I must admit to never having been to any Middle Eastern country, and you know of my intrinsic bias toward Japan, through residence. In the current condition I have no interest in traveling to the ME, but I'm interested in any evidence to the contrary of my current speculations.
 

Well, democracy in Palestine seems to be clanking forward, considering Palestine's not even a state yet. By that I mean: people get the idea and turn out to vote. So let's assume the same thing happens in Iraq. Let's even assume that after a hard decade Iraq will be a clanking, but functioning, democracy. People can work, the press is free, women can vote and go to school -- all that good liberal stuff. Is this bad for Islamic terrorists?

If so, why?
 

Brian...I'm comparing the two countries in the very broadest way, and noting that the nature of their respective peoples are equally foreign to the American mind. I recognize that they are deeply different; I only use the example of Japan because it troubles me that we did such a heinous thing there, one I would not have sanctioned had I been alive and in any position to stop it. Much the same way I feel about what we're doing in Iraq.

I have to call you on this characterization of the Middle East: Though much of the technology available may be employed, how many scientific or cultural advances have come from there? Quite a lot, actually; our modern understanding of mathematics, astronomy, anatomy, surgery, and chemistry (just to name a few) are built on ancient Arab science. And have you seen Moorish architecture? Incredible. As one writer whose name I can't remember notes, the Arabs had science when Europeans were still living in caves.

The problem, as I see it, is that unlike, say, the post-Tokugawa Japanese, there's so much inter- and intra-tribal conflict that it's difficult now for the Arab world to pull together and build something positive. And while I recognize that Islam is not inherently violent, as many American Muslims have been hurrying to point out here at home, it has strong potential to be turned in that direction, a tendency I don't see changing through enforced democracy and a higher standard of living. I was reading a heartbreaking book recently about Iran that noted that women there once had jobs, position, the freedom to go about with their faces bare...and then the Shah was ousted, Ayatollah Khomeini came in, and goodbye, female freedoms.

I don't know how effectively democracy can prevent the rise of hardliners. Note that I am not specifying what flavor of hardliners...Islamist, Jewish, Christian...
 

Good point. Israel has its fanatics, America has the Christian right, and I'd venture to say that the sort of Christian fundamentalists in America who want to blow up abortion clinics or force Creationism into textbooks would have more sway if our economy tanked. After that it gets complicated, though, so let's stick to Islamic terrorism. We want to know if "democratizing Iraq" was a sane response to Islamic terrorism.
 

Errr, this is tough; I feel like I don't know enough. I don't feel like any of us do, and that's part of the problem.

I don't know if democracy, or at least the democracy we're pushing, is consistent with Islam as practiced in Iraq. Leaders chosen by the people and not by God? Sounds disrespectful of God, in a country where that's meaningful. I don't think we, with our easy godamns and variety of faiths and general secularity, can begin to understand that.

Part of my reaction is unavoidably knee-jerk, and informed by images of US soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners: even if democracy is ultimately the best thing for Iraq, we're administering it with a sledgehammer. The lack of understanding we've shown of anything in this process taints the whole venture, in my book.

Democracy whether you like it or not may not seem like the best deal to some of these folks, and I can't blame them.
 

Oh good lord, I went and looked at that 'Old Europe' post you linked to. That is some scary shit. And at least one writer has it completely wrong (well, one who lets me make a point I haven't yet), about how "Moslems have never been kind or tolerant of the local culture when they take over." Evidence doesn't always bear this out; during the Crusades, when Saladdin recaptured Jerusalem from the Christians, he specifically invited the Jews back to live unobstructed in the holy city. Yes, Jews: the same people who had been abused by Richard the Lionheart's Christian armies streaming south from Europe.

Part of the murk surrounding the inadequate American understanding of what's happening in the Middle East is the idea that Jews and Arabs are and always have been natural enemies. I know this is off-topic, but it seems emblematic of how little we know, and how we're willing to stay ignorant rather than do the hard work that might make us hesitate. That might make us waver and question this war.

I'd feel better if I didn't think that Wolfowitz (who has been fantasizing about this war since the year I was born, apparently) and his crew were very deliberately taking advantage of that willful blindness.
 

I'm glad you mentioned Wolfowitz. He was ambassador to Indonesia during the 1980s. He should know, if anyone does, that democracy in Muslim countries like Indonesia and the Philippines has not cut down on terrorism. It's given the bad guys freedom to move. Only after Suharto fell did Jema'ah Islamiyah move back to Indonesia and start to blow shit up.

I know Wolfowitz would make a long-term argument -- that if a nation becomes more open and less destitute, after years and years, young men will tend to grow up less radical and less pissed off at America. Sounds good, but is it true? Osama bin Laden wasn't poor.
 

I hate to post something short and sweet after such wonderful and lengthy discussion on this subject but it seems to me that the Middle East is simply too tribal and too clanish to ever enjoy democracy as we recognize it in the west.

Another interesting point that I bring to the table from a friend who just returned from a year in Iraq: we completely bungled and lost any opportunity to win the PR/PsyOps war before we ever set boots on the sand. The Pentagon underestimated the power of Al Jazeera, to begin with ...
 

Rodger, you raise a good point, and one that ties back in very neatly. We went in completely unprepared in a dozen ways, and that's unconscionable, considering the massive intelligence and policy apparati we have at our disposal.

And if Wolfowitz has been planning this since he was a grad student--and has, as Mike has noted, had a close-up view of another large Muslim nation--why do we still look like mindless cowboys (no disrespect to real, thoughtful cowboys)?

The question I've been turning over lately is this: if force won't do it, how can the world help the people of the region lead the sort of lives they really want? I know that's not the question this war really seeks to answer, but I think it's the one many Americans hold in their hearts. We believe in our system, our freedoms, our high standard of living: we look at other nations that aren't doing as well materially and we are compelled to do something. Americans are incredibly generous people; I read once that we have, per capita, the highest rate of charitable giving in the world (although I'd like to note that for a while, Germany was leading the world in government-funded tsunami aid; a nod to our host).

The point I'm getting at is that the underlying impulse--we can make a change for the good, if we just hang in there--is admirable. But the methodology is all wrong. Does anyone have any other ideas?
 

The war makes me yearn for the days when the CIA staged its own coups off-camera. I'm afraid Iraq will get exactly one half-elected president who turns into a dictator to keep the nation from fracturing. Then a period of no-democracy and festering terrorism. That's the model for Muslim countries in Southeast Asia like Indonesia and the Philippines, and just thinking about it gives me a hangover.