Imposing Democracy?

Oil Graft Fuels the Insurgency, Iraq and U.S. Say
By ROBERT F. WORTH and JAMES GLANZ
Officials see a pattern of corruption enabling the flow of
oil money to the insurgency that threatens to undermine
Iraq's economy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/international/middleeast/05corrupt.html?th&emc=th

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The U.S. and its allies occupied Germany and Japan with our troops for many years to impose democracy upon our former enemies. We had really a majority of Germans on our side in this effort and no threats of violence and the same was largely true of Japan as well.

The Iraq venture looks to be precisely the disaster against which Machiavelli warned in his The Prince -- occupying a hostile nation with one's troops can only result in resistance and a losing situation over the long run.

Probably the best for which we can hope in Iraq is some sort of Shia Islamic republic which will not be friendly to us and most likely will ally itself with Iran, also now made hostile by our past history of interventions there and insulting characterization as a "evil" nation by the accident of a speech writer's elaborations for one of Bush's key speeches.

What a g-d awful mess!

P.S. The Livy quote in my signature below also comes from Machiavelli's citation of it in The Prince -- the archetypal handbook on how and when to fight wars!
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
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Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
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