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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: paul_philp who wrote (67121)	1/20/2003 12:20:37 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

America is the last best hope for the Arab world... America is offering a message of hope to a region largely lacking in hope. The American people will respond if they are told what their mission is. If America is the last hope of the Arab world, the Arab world has no hope. America can remove Saddam. America can sponsor a new Constitution for Iraqis. But America can't create real, functioning democracy in Iraq, or anywhere else in the Arab world. Only the Arabs can do that. The mission that the American people have responded to is the maintenance of their own security. Americans want Saddam removed and his WMD programs dismantled. They want this because they have been told that Saddam and these programs are a terrible and imminent threat to the US. I don't think Americans will respond to the mission if the mission is to modernize the Arab world, because Americans know very well that this mission is beyond the limits of American power. Armies can remove governments. They aren't much good at creating new ones.

To: paul_philp who wrote (67121)	1/20/2003 9:43:37 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Nice point, Paul, but I found myself focused on another of Ajami's points which is the absence of any "natural" political constituencies for "modernization" and, of course, the points he does not mention, the US track record on this score and the fact that modernization and democracy are, finally, items which cannot be installed by outsiders. There is so much about this Iraqi invasion that has not been thought through publicly. What about, just as a for instance, the US invades Iraq for the reasons we've been told to date, to eliminate Saddam's WMD. And, after some struggles, succeeds. Then Bush announces to the assembled folk that we plan to "modernize" Iraq so our troops will stick around for a while, be in more than a little danger for a while, will be asked to deal with populations which, deeply, do not wish for us to be around, etc. Frankly, the talk of the US modernizing the Arab world seems to me spin to justify an invasion rather than the product of careful planning. At least as careful as the planning which has obviously gone into preparations for an invasion.