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

To: michael97123 who wrote (156153)	1/13/2005 10:19:36 AM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

No interest in taking Friedman on today--his Prozac must have kicked in as his article is exceptionally lucid. I might have added another rule to his: there cannot be democracy without democrats, and no matter what people tell you, the ME has precious little experience with democracy and even fewer democrats. Most of the ME is populated by tribes and factions. Very few cross-tribal ties and even less trust that one group would treat another fairly should it come upon the reins of power. We are force-feeding them centuries of hard-earned Western experience, which is based on trust and compromise. Whether they'll take it and grow healthy or regurgitate it because it is a strange meal, I cannot yet say. As Winston Chruchill said, we need to be armed not only with rifles and bullets, but with ideas, which are just as potent. The battle of ideas requires that they look over the horizon, past their tribe, their religion, their faction and learn to tolerate and not vilify or persecute "the other" and, perhaps most important, refuse to take revenge for past trangressions. A huge cultural divide has to be bridged, one which under normal circumstances would take a lot of time, effort, and compromise, but one which we have seen successfully bridged without too much violence elsewhere in the recent past, viz., South Africa. I am not satisfied that the critical battle of ideas is even being fought by our side. It should not be a too terribly difficult battle to win since I cannot imagine any half-way rational human being choosing tyranny over democracy or oppression over freedom.