In its February 27 issue, The American Conservative writes: When it comes to DPT [Democratic Peace Theory], the Middle East has become a laboratory with Iraq serving as a test tube for the experiment. And it’s a test that seems to be failing. [&hell

Enjoy

P.S.: Do you guys wanna participate in our Carnival of German-American Relations with any of your many great posts on transatlantic relations?

More info here:
http://america-germany.atlanticreview.org/

“The same racist mind set from my experience in Iraq is what many Sunnis have towards Shiites IMHO.“

This is bizarre, because Sunnis and Shias are of the same race. Normally we would call what they feel sectarianism.

“Also your assumption that Shiites received the same level of education in Iraq as Sunni is wrong.”

Don’t forget that Baathism was a socialist ideology. I recognize that under fascist dictatorships and even the best socialist economy, wealth often is not distributed as equally as the system prescribes. However, in a socialist system, education does not depend on affluence, like in the US. People do have relatively equal access.

“Also if you are looking for good information about Iraq just check out the numerous milblogging sites.”

Sorry, I said “credible”. I recognize the value of individuals’ ideas and perceptions, and the fact that their observations are valid representations of the world. But that’s generally not where I would get my data on gross energy output of a country.

“Don’t trust what the MSM is telling you. I was in Iraq and saw them in action. They have an agenda and it is not pro-military.”

Who is MSM? So you don’t trust people who are not pro-military?

In this good piece (The Coming Normalcy?), Kaplan returns to his strength (reporting) and eschews his recent romanticization of Special Ops Forces. … Plus, Kaplan moves more and more into the world of economics, which gives his usual excellent reporting a lot more heft.

I am still working on a review of the article myself.

Also your assumption that Shiites received the same level of education in Iraq as Sunni is wrong. I was amazed by how destitute the Shiite areas in southern Iraq were. I would see people living in absolute, utter poverty and yet in the desert behind them you would see oil wells but none of that money was going them. The majority of the money was going to Saddam and the Sunnis. The difference between Shiite and Sunni cities was quite evident.

Also if you are looking for good information about Iraq just check out the numerous milblogging sites. The Mudville Gazette is the best place to start. Don’t trust what the MSM is telling you. I was in Iraq and saw them in action. They have an agenda and it is not pro-military.

That is a very weak analogy, considering that:

(a) Shias are, on average, no less educated than the previous leaders, whereas blacks in the US continue to be less educated than whites, on average- thus less qualified for governance;
(b) Blacks do not make up anywhere near a majority of the US population, whereas Shias make up quite a decent majority in Iraq;
© Whites in the South justified their apartheid with references to religion, “culture”, etc. whereas Sunnis have no such justification- on the contrary, they claim they themselves to not have adequate representation, which is simply false in many cases- they have absolutely no objections to Shias’ getting a representative part of the power (their message is highly confused);
(d) If blacks were to take over in the United States, it would not be a case of a foreign occupying power, but a revolution by a small minority, whereas most Iraqis can claim the justice of fighting against an occupier;
(e) If blacks were to “put… in control”, as you put it, that would imply a failure to observe democratic processes, whereas the present government was elected democratically- not perfectly, but certainly to some extent;
(f) Saddam Hussein’s regime did favor Sunnis for leadership positions, but did not exclude them or any group from violence, whereas whites were almost totally exempt from anything near what blacks faced up until the 1960s (and dare I say even now, to a lesser extent?).

I agree with your main points about ethnicity and I don’t claim to have any idea about electricity output, etc. in Iraq. I’m interested to know where I can read some objective figures from a reasonable source (e.g. the military itself, the US governent, another government- NOT one of these conspiracy-theory driven sites that I so often come across when looking for information on the war).

But that analogy must go.

“U.S. Is Seeking Better Balance In Iraqi Police,” by Edward Wong, New York Times, 7 March 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/international/middleeast/07military.html (from Democratic Underground).

While his Chief Justice sidelines internation…

I didn’t care much for President Clinton but my dislike for him never caused me to want the US to fail in Bosnia or Kosovo. It is the same thing in Iraq. Just because you dislike Bush shouldn’t mean that you should hope for the US to fail because if we do we all lose not just Bush and the US military.

But keep this in mind when we’re talking about the prospect of civil war: we had civil war in the Balkans, ethnic war, and it took upwards of 200,000 lives. Iraq is a country of over 23 million people. Since this mosque was destroyed, we’ve seen a few hundred deaths. That’s not a civil war. That can ignite one, but it’s still a long way off.

The Sunni areas have a racist mindset towards the Shia led government to begin with plus many of these so called “insurgents” are really just criminal gangs making a quick buck off of the instability. Criminal gangs bomb the oil pipelines in order to keep selling boot leg gasoline to Iraqis waiting in long fuel lines that they purchased for less in a neighboring country and sell for more in Iraq. The mafia gangs are making a killing on this. Plus when I was there we found that the Iraqi company that was fixing the pipe lines was working with the gangs to bomb the pipelines because it was more business for them. Why wasn’t a US company fixing the pipes? Because the manufactured uproar over Haliburton in the media caused the CPA to award more contracts to Iraqi companies despite the corruption. Yet despite this oil production has been at pre-war levels.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/05/09/BUGAE6H4GA1.DTL

Electricity is a problem because during Saddam’s rule the power went to the big cities. Under the new government electricity is evenly distributed across teh country. People in the country side were so thankful about the amount of electricity they were getting while people in Baghdad for example got less and the MSM made sure to report that. Plus with the no found prosperity people were buying electronic goods, sattelite dishes, air conditioners, etc. at a high rate further straining the power grid. Iraq has more electricity output now than during Saddam’s rule but the demand has increased higher than the electricity output can keep up with. You can’t build a power plant overnight.

Also you need to read Ralph Peters in the NY Post because he has been running around Iraq trying to find this civil war that the NY Times has declared. He can’t find it and the US military has confirmed it this week about how the media has exagerated the claims of a civil war by inflating mosque attacks and deaths.

In contrast to this, Saddam Hussein seemed like a competent leader who provided order.

Iraq is a laboratory for ideas about how to wring normalcy from anarchy. And anarchy is one of the great foreign policy challenges of the twenty-first century… Tribes are natural to humanity. For most of history, they’ve been a stabilizing force, a socially organizing force. We shouldn’t condemn tribes per se. Tribes form a much more natural means of political development than something like Western democracy, which is very new and has only succeeded in a relatively small geographic portion of the world. We’ve seen an explosion of democracy around the world since the 1990s. It’s not clear yet how well it will succeed.

All too true. Although I would guess some find that statement very uncomfortable.