THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM?

“Our ability to create democracy, an extraordinarily evolved and delicate balance of political, social, economic and cultural forces that represents several hundred years of Atlanticist European development, is about as great as the ability of your Apple tech support phone rep to teach you in ten minutes how to create your own operating system.
Why do we retain such illusions? I suppose we’re prisoners of our extraordinary success with Germany and Japan. What we forget is that each of those countries was utterly, brutally destroyed by its conquerors – in Germany’s case, nearly an entire generation of young German women was raped and millions of other German civilians were killed (read R. Conquest’s latest book on the former); and of course, we nuked Japan. The establishment of democracy in these two postwar regimes was a bizarre fluke that has not been and will not be repeated. If even Argentina can descend so rapidly into economic and political chaos, then what chance is there that Iraq, Iran, Saudi or Syria will become both orderly and democratic in our lifetimes?
Fess up, Andrew: would you bet a substantial sum of your retirement funds on such an unlikely outcome? If not, then why on earth should this nation’s policy be predicated on this longshot of all longshots?” – Just one of many stimulating letters in the Book Club today. Don’t miss it. Ledeen will respond again Monday.