The Redhunter

... In the coming months, we may find that the only hope of restoring order is a military government. It sounds repellent, but a U.S.-backed coup may be the only alternative to endless anarchy.

You'll want to read the whole thing, but Peters' argument is that Arabs can't handle democracy, at least not yet. The Iraqi Police are out of countrol and pose as much danger as the insurgents. Maliki, he says, is simply "a puppet of Muqtada al-Sadr". The Iraqi Army may be the country's last hope.

Not that this is all our fault, Peters stresses. Although we have made mistakes, the simple fact is that we have given the Iraqis a chance to build a new country and they are blowing it.

Jim Dunnigan's StrategyPage has another view of the matter. Yes, they say, there are many problems in Iraq. It is a disturbingly lawless place, with seemingly no respect for the law and order that we in the West take for granted. Corruption is not just rampant but is a way of life. The reason for these problems is not that Arabs in Iraq or elsewhere enjoy that way of life, but rather because "they have not reached a point where enough people in a country have decided that democracy and "civil society" is superior to the old ways."

In the West, it's been over a century since most people accepted the rule of law and democracy. Political scientists, historians and economists agree that this combination has also played a major role in creating the booming economies and all that wealth. But in the Middle East, anyone who wants those goodies, moves to the West. Trying to change minds in the Middle East is too dangerous. The old ways have too many fans, usually heavily armed fans with short tempers.

But there are an increasing number of Middle Easterners who want to try democracy and rule of law. Many of them live in Iraq. They resent Western suggestions that only dictatorship works in the Middle East, or that it's futile to try and establish democracy in the region. Until September, 2001, that was an attitude much respected (if not much talked about publicly) in the West. The dictators were supported, because these thugs kept things under control. But then came the increasing attacks on Westerners by Islamic terrorists. Many Westerners now demanded something more than "police efforts" be directed at the Middle Eastern situation. That led to the invasion of Iraq, which brought down one of the worst dictators in the region, and presented Iraqis with the option to try democracy. Many have accepted the offer, but a large minority, mainly composed of the deposed Sunni Arabs, have not.

StrategyPage is essentially arguing that appearances can be deceiving because a although determined minority can create an awful lot of death and destruction, this does not mean that they represent what the majority want. In other words, we shouldn't give up yet.

Iraqis are well aware of their own history, and one important part of it is that when the British and French took over from the Turks after World War I, they set up sort-of democracies in the region. Unfortunately, these nascent democracies all failed.

The Iraqis are well aware of their track record when it comes to democracy, more so than all the critics, pundits and talking heads in the West. Most Iraqis say they want democracy, and many have died supporting their beliefs. But there are still many Iraqis who prefer a dictator, a "strong man," and the corrupt old ways. This is another battle going on that rarely makes the headlines. But this is the battle that matters most. Ending the violence in Iraq is less of a problem than is establishing rule of law and working democracy.

Who is correct? Peters or the editors of StrategyPage?

I tend to agree with the view that if we can hang in there for some additional years we can eventually make Iraq work. I once read in an interview where General Casey say that it took an average of 9 years to defeat an insurgency. I just don't know if we have that much patience.

In an upcoming piece, I'm going to discuss at more length the concept of whether a society or nation can combine both democratic development and high levels of violence. Stay tuned.