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I arrive to this thread by chance but was interested and had to add something it seems that no one really realize that Iraq was always characterizes by conflicts and internal war and Afghanistan was just tribal.
As someone who is familiar with the history of the middle east I wrote an explanation of the politics of Iraq here as it seems that two years have passed and nothing was learned.
Lauren,
Welcome to SWJ.
There a quite a few of us in here who have lived, worked, and lost friends in the Middle East.
Your characterization of Iraq versus Afghnaistan is overly simplistic as is your blog post.
Perhaps you might introduce yourself here and members can better assess where you are coming from.
Tom
I agree that I simplified the situation but no too much as I see it and other people that have dedicate a lot of time researching the evolution of the regimes in Iraq and in the Arab countries in the middle east agree with me that democracy can't succeed without the maturity of the people and the agreement to compromise, the attempt to have a semi democratic elections in the the Palestinian Authority has resulted in the Hamas take over the Gaza strip.
If the values of dialog, compromise, the importance of the process etc are not accepted and the getting what one wants is more important then the way or the price then the minute one feels that he can't get what he want he start using terror internally and externally.
We teach children fair play from the age they are infants and still they would turn to violence many times when they don't like the situation, with families, tribes, ethnic groups and other section it is not very different.
Violence is rising when people are expected to accept a change to their status quo because someone else want it to change.
Democracy is all about shared values at least the value that the game is more important then the result, when you don't have it you don't have democracy
No disagreement on that. Indeed the fundamental flaw in NeoCon thinking was that the Iraqis would simply adopt democracy and move on. But the list of complicating factors is much longer than simply saying they cannot handle democracy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lauren
As for Afghanistan, same thing. Yes it is tribal. I always describe it first as a region rather than a country because it has no history of nationhood unless occupied by someone else as part of empire. It is also criminal (at least as we define criminal) in that it has always been both a trade route and smugglers paradise. The long standing tradition of poppy farming offers clear proof of that.
Tom