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

To: Ilaine who wrote (86004)	3/25/2003 4:22:09 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Thanks. No, I don't read all posts here, there are just too many; mostly I just respond to posts to me, and post articles. So I'm sure I miss lots of good stuff. There is a lot of contradictory stuff coming out, about what exactly "nation-building" means. And even if there is an agreed plan, it'll probably evolve. So we'll just have to see. A lot depends on whether or not the civilians are hostile to U.S. soldiers. News of an anti-Saddam uprising in Basra, just now. Humanitarian aid, providing food and clean water, this has nothing to do with it. Nation-building refers to setting up a government, and the civil and military institutions needed to make that governmental system last. <The responsibility for turning Iraq into a stable, peaceful democracy falls to the people of Iraq.> Hmmm. If that were true, then inspections, not regime change, would have been the U.S. goals. What do we do next, if we supervise an election, and an anti-American Islamist wins? In that situation, the Algerian Generals started killing all the Islamists, while the Turkish Generals let the election result stand. What will the American General do? After WW2, the rules were, anyone was allowed to run, as long as he wasn't a Nazi, and anyone was allowed to win an election, as long as he wasn't a communist. Th odds of a nationalist guerrilla uprising against the U.S. in Iraq (Bilow's nightmare), are in direct proportion to how long our soldiers stay there, and how visible they are. That is, we might get away with a permanent military presence, if we keep our soldiers in camps well away from the natives, and let the natives have complete internal autonomy (even if that means a un-democratic theocracy). Like we've done in Kuwait.