Bruce, Indonesia has been and remains fascinating to watch. In January I posted the following to Neocon here:
<<Neocon,
If you haven't yet, you have GOT to read the excellent article in Vanity Fair (Dec or Jan) on Indonesia. It's not nearly as simple as "extremist Arab Muslims are whipping the world's most populous Muslim country into a hotbed of Wahabism", which, given the ongoing disarray there, was actually my fear before I read the article. Now I view the situation there much more optimistically. My revised assumption is "Western culture ultimately kicks Wahabi tail in Indonesia". Take a look when you have a chance.>>
Their ability to handle elections appears better even than Florida's. Nothing short of amazing. The country's recent progress shows (as the Vanity Fair article speculated) that Indonesians vigorously desire to become a wealthy Asian tiger, and understand that that isn't going to happen under repressive Wahabism.
Indonesia's initially wobbly but now steady progression reminds me of Fukuyama's statement that the arrow of time points ultimately to freedom, which I think is dead on. He is most certainly (despite Nadine's uninformed protest otherwise) a neoconservative, but in his recent article in The National Interest he suggests that his fellow neocons remain in denial regarding the lessons provided by the experiment that is Iraq (dead on again). He takes particular issue with a central Emperor-has-no-clothes neocon precept--that the US can and should nation-build democracy into cultures unaccustomed to same:
"If the United States cannot eliminate poverty or raise test scores in Washington, D.C.," he chided his neo-con colleagues, "how does it expect to bring democracy to a part of the world that has stubbornly resisted it and is virulently anti-American to boot?"
"The United States," he concluded, "needs to be more realistic about its nation-building abilities, and cautious in taking on large social-engineering projects in parts of the world it does not understand very well."
Notably, we did NOT invade Indonesia, nor did we attempt to nation-build them, yet this Muslim nation, left to their own devices, has progressed from a ruthless, ironhanded dictator to successful elections and democracy. There, the arrow of time alone has delivered far more democracy than our $200,000,000,000.00 and 135,000 soldiers have yet delivered in Iraq. Note well, Wolfowitz.
John |
