Nation Building

This is the key issue in the future war in Iraq.

If the US takes a hands-off approach, as we largely have in Afganistan, than the country may descend into a quagmire of generals and fundementalists, battling each other. If we install a provisional government that keeps 90% of Saddam's government with a change at the top, than we will look like hypocrites. Our only hope is to do what President Bush has committed us to doing.

Mona Charen, writing today, lays out the argument. "The Arab world's hatred and resentment of the United States has many roots -- envy, frustration over the Islamic world's stagnation vis a vis the West, anger at American support for Israel and dismay at America's popular culture. We cannot wave a magic wand and make those resentments disappear. But we can look honestly at the countries of the region and recognize, as a 2002 United Nations report documents, that they are among the most backward nations on earth. . . .

Backwardness, despotism and a violence-prone religious elite have made the Arab world a cauldron of radicalism. But if the nation in the geographical and metaphorical heart of the Arab world were to be firmly planted on the road to freedom, prosperity and pluralism, it will represent a decisive rollback of the forces of darkness. It's no wonder that Saudi Arabia, Iraq's neighbor to the south, is scheming for Saddam to be deposed and publicly calling upon him to commit suicide. They know very well that a reformed Iraq will be a beacon for all Arabs. No wonder Syria is helping Iraq to hide its weapons of mass destruction.

Americans have scorned nation-building in the past. But we can no longer afford that particular luxury. The repressive, cruel and closed nations of the Muslim world have bred a fanaticism that has already been profoundly painful to us and may be catastrophically so in the near future. The question of war will be decided within weeks, but there is far more at stake than Iraq's fate."

While I disagree with her often enough, on this point I think Ms. Charen is right.