<First, I do not recall saying it was easy, merely that it was possible.>
You said "Iraq can progress to a democracy fairly rapidly". This is unfounded.
<Second, not very many have died or been wounded.>
This is a shameful statement. The tragic and needless loss of life in Iraq is a scar on the foreign policy of the United States. Thousands of Americans have been killed and wounded -- tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed and wounded.
<Third, our military had a particular strategy. It involved a light occupation and restrained use of force, and a reliance on special ops to hunt down targets. It worked pretty well, but is subject to reasonable debate.>
Our military had an ill-conceived, ideological bunch of crap rammed through by bureaucrats and politicians as military doctrine over the objections of military people who knew better but who had less power than the bureaucrats and politicians who were calling the shots.
<Fourth, the idea that democracy is possible is well- founded, given our experience with the Axis after WWII, and with the emerging nations of Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War.>
There is no valid comparison to make to countries like Germany post WWII. This is just more misguided fantasy.
<Fifth, I pointed to some specifics to buttress my points, unlike you, who allows assertion to hang like Christmas tree ornaments on slender branches.......>
You made "points" about how culture can be changed by "education". Communists believed they could "reeducate" the people to be good communists. Democracies rarely stray into forced social engineering -- this is the province of ideologically driven dictatorships. |
