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

To: Win Smith who wrote (115982)	10/1/2003 2:07:48 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I read Rumsfeld's article, washingtonpost.com and the part Zakaria eviscerates is pretty bad. If it was Rumsfeld's idea to say they had to avoid the pitfall of local economy becoming "dependent" on the foreign aid - much as undeveloped places do under an inundation of oil money - because it displaces local production and commodities, then he should have said so. I think that's what he had in mind. However he's probably not as myopic as Zakaria makes out. The thing Rumsfeld does have going in Iraq is relative ubiquity: The military is running thousands of local projects, hiring locals and paying local wages. It's under the aegis of the US military that most places there now have municipal councils operating and there is hardly a US military person who doesn't have a good intuitive idea of how democracy functions at the funny little places where adjustments make the process work: oversimplified form - the winners don't steal too much for their followers, don't tyrannize the losers, consult a lot even with the losers, and don't beat up or murder the rival candidates. These are reasonable principles even if the first local leaders are more appointed than elected, as it were.... It seems to me that there is no way to get going with democracy except to start doing it. Doing it at a local level is the place to start because "coaching" is relatively easy, mistakes don't have widespread consequences, and leads to expectations of democratic behaviour at a national level. Zakaria is right in that rushing to democracy at a national level is a mistake but they have to start some place some time, and there's no point in putting it off at the municipal level. I disagree with you that Rumsfeld ought to have Bremer's job. Bremer and Abazaid [sp?] seem to be getting the job done. In Rummy's own words, "I'm more of a concepty guy," which is fine, but probably not quite right for the Iraq administrator.