Re: Iraq unable to have democracy & why SH needed to be brutal to hold the place together

Archimedes Plutonium wrote:

> You know, when you read everything about SH from western presses, they
> never say anything good about SH. Never. Especially when you read or
> hear what Mr. Bush says about SH. I do not know about you, but I was
> taught and I learned that there is some "good" in everyone and
> everything, even though the majority or preponderance is evil. Yes,
> there was a bit of good in SH. I believe it is the fact that the only
> way to glue together or hold together a country like Iraq of its 3 or
> 4 or 5 or higher number of ethnic cultures into one country was to be
> as brutal as SH was. And now that the brutality has disappeared from
> Iraq, that it will go its "natural route of political evolution" and
> that is to dissolve or disintegrate or fracture into 3 or 4 or 5
> separate countries. Democracy is a poor glue to holding together
> diverse peoples. USSR busted up. Yugoslavia busted up.
> 

Thomas Friedman wrote some thoughts along those lines.  Before the invasion
of Iraq and the fall of Saddam's regime, he wrote that it was hard to know
if Iraq was the way it was because of Saddam's brutal regime, or if
Saddam's brutal regime was the way it was because of the nature of Iraq.

-- 
In theory, theory and practice are the same.