Neo-cons versus Realists
The debate in the US over the nature of a post-Saddam Iraq pits democratisers (most often those of "neoconservative" views) against pragmatists (usually "realist" by school). Many realists, like Henry Kissinger, support the removal of Saddam's regime but oppose a protracted high-profile US-led occupation of an Arab capital and an attempt to impose democracy on peoples who do not know or want it.
The biographies of contemporary Islamist terrorists show the majority to be well-educated, semi-westernised young men on the periphery of traditional societies. Force rapid change on such societies with revolutionary ideas like liberal democracy and globe-spanning market economics, and the result will be an accelerated dislocation that will produce more terrorists, not fewer.
--More here
The coming experiment is going to be fascinating. Scholar Bernard Lewis is optimistic. I think Belloc might've been less so. Paraphrasing Daniel Patrick Moynihan: the great conservative truth is that culture swamps politics. The great liberal truth is that politics changes culture.
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