Nice post. Thanks.
On Bush and Afghanistan, I was harkening back to two things. First, his oft repeated campaign statements that he was not "into nation building." Which I took to mean it was among the many things he wished to distinguish himself from Clinton. Second, Afghanistan is clearly a country in need of serious resources simply to bring it back to the state of play in the late 60s and early 70s. The US has not organized a major effort to do so. (Note I'm not focused on democracy here because I don't know enough to know whether you are right about it not being ready but I do think it's unlikely for some time.) But Pollack and his writing companion (can never remember his name and am too lazy to check it out) argue that the US is seriously in need of demonstration projects, ones that project good will, and Afghanistan, they argue, is a good starting place.
As for whether the Bush administration is interested or could be constrained to work on installing democracy in Iraq, I don't see much evidence of either. The few comments I've seen in that regard, most recently from Wolfowitz and from Perle, don't strike me as serious attempts to mobilize Bush to mobilize resources to do so. But are rather political rhetoric to gain supporters for the invasion. What do you see that I don't?
Bush, in my view, has no principle-based commitment to the installation of democracy in Iraq, but he has good reasons to do so anyway.
I agree with this formulation save for David Reiff's commentary that democracy is not something that is installed. It must grow up from the bottom. My fear is that, in the interests of "regional stability", meaning largely global oil prices, the first priority for the US will be to install a regime it can have a large amount of control over. From their point of view, a democratic state would quickly get out of control, given the demographics. |
