David Ignatius makes an interesting parallel between our situation after the Civil War and the War in Iraq. Both had unexpectedly difficult postwar periods marked by insurgents undermining democracy.
The key point to remember is that the bad outcome in the South was driven by the success of the KKK in making the main cleavage racial instead of economic. The white planter elite succeeded in making the poor whites side with them against their natural economic and political allies, the newly freed slaves. The fact that the white elites succeeded didn't make them right; it was all the more reason to oppose them.
Apply this thinking to Iraq. The insurgents are trying to make the main cleavage Islam vs. the West. They are, fortunately, succeeding to a much lesser extent that the KKK did a century ago. But to the extent they do succeed there are some in the West that want to take this as a reason to abandone the project. Such people are in the same position as those who said that we should abandone the South to the KKK.
No comments:
Post a Comment