Jonah Goldberg has some useful thoughts. And note that I'm using the word "liberal" in the classical sense.

Harping on elections is a fools errand.

Poing! Jonah Goldberg has been hit with a clue. Good for him. Maybe for no reason other than to save face, his column mysteriously omits the letters I-R-A-Q. Yet, between the lines, it has Iraq written all over it.

It is about Iraq. It's a reply to a debate that was going on in The Corner yesterday on the subject of whether it was a mistake to pursue democracy in a country that wasn't ready for it (though it applies to the PLO as well).

It is about Iraq.

Even better then. Jonah Goldberg might yet arrive at the same wisdom as the Belgravia Dispatch.

whether it was a mistake to pursue democracy in a country that wasn't ready for it

I would put it this way. It is a mistake to habitually promote democracy as proof of victory, in a country that is being drained of liberalism by civil war. It is a colossal error, if not an outright lie, even if they waffle by calling the democracy "fragile".

Well, Rand, we have a rare disagreement. Mr. Goldberg's ruminations are not useful, they are fanciful - a lapse into the kind of pointless "if only" crap we get by the carload every day from those masters of baseless fabulism the American Left ("None of this would have happened if John Kerry was President!").

How having a "Man on Horseback" of some kind in place of the current Iraqi government would allow things to be both more liberal and less messy in Iraq than they are at present - given that the enemy would be not a jot less determinedly, amorally evil in its methods, nor the political/religious/ethnic fracturedness of the place a jot less real, is, frankly, beyond me.

An Ataturk was possible in Turkey because there was a pre-existing Turkish national identity. Iraq, in contrast, is a hodge-podge of mutually hostile ethnics all of whom are tribal barbarians in their basic social forms and attitudes. Any Iraqi Ataturk-wannabe would automatically be anathema to at least 40% of the population just on ethnic grounds. The basic idea is idiotic on its face.

And we would still have a secret army of Baathist and Al Quaeda Orcs gleefully mass-killing at every opportunity. The authoritarian stooge regime Mr. Goldberg seems to be pining after could not possibly be doing anything more effective than the current Iraqi administration to stamp it out. Less, in fact, as it would lack any basis for asserting the legitimacy of its actions.

There's also the matter of the Coalition. If the object of the exercise had been to find some "suitable" Saddam-Lite, there never would have been one. Our Coalition partners are democracies. They were willing to risk troops to bring democracy to Iraq, but I see no basis for assuming anything but horselaughs having met an appeal to help bring "authoritarianism with a human face" to Iraq. Attempting to swap Maliki now for some yet-to-be-named future pick in the National Bonapartist League Draft would have everyone else now standing with us in Iraq - especially the Brits - doing a fast fade. And correctly so.

Making a real nation and a real democracy when all you have to work with are people no more than two generations removed from the lusty life of desert horse barbarians is not going to be either a quick or easy job. It is merely necessary.

The whole point of instituting democracy and a liberal administration is to provide a plausible basis upon which to break the heretofore iron rule of Middle Eastern politics - that one either rules or dies. The all-or-nothing nature of inter-tribal politics/warfare is the only social/political paradigm that resonates deeply in the Middle Eastern mind. It is going to take time to demonstrate that another paradigm is even possible.

Given the basic bloody-mindedness of the place, I think we've made a good start. The Sunni leadership - having recently had more than a wee taste of "taking it" after having been long previously accustomed strictly to "dishing it out" - are now having something of an epiphany about the usefulness of having Americans around - we're fair because we are neutral.

We think, correctly, that all Muslim tribalists are full of shit up to their eyebrows. So we don't play favorites except - crucially - when it comes to behavior. We really don't give a rat's ass about their pissy little tribal and denominational squabbles and we don't really want to "rule" them either. What we do want is for them to quit killing each other as a first resort to settling every dispute and to quit being a place, as it was under Saddam, whose only non-oil export was trouble. This is an acceptably low minimum standard of national behavior and I think it seems to be occuring to more and more Iraqis of all stripes that, with a little work, they might just be able to meet it.

There are always people who will never see reason, of course. We just need to keep grinding away at them. This will take additional time, money and lives, but steadily less of the latter two as we continue to invest more of the critical first.

This is no time to be going wobbly.

Dick, briefly, I suspect that you're mischaracterizing Jonah's comments (though he'd have to respond himself to know for sure). I don't think he's pining for a "strongman." I think he's simply pining for some way to inculcate liberal values in the populace before they're set loose at voting booths. I am, too, though what that might be isn't obvious.

For that matter, while the problem isn't anywhere near as bad, I wish we could do that here as well.

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