Mitch Townsend asks, Are we trying to reach the wrong goal in Iraq?:
We went into Iraq with the goal of creating a democracy where a tyrant had ruled. After a few hundred years of democratic republics, constitutional monarchy, free markets, individual rights, and a tendency toward egalitarianism, we may have come to miss some of the obvious factors that make for a successful nation. It seems so natural to us that we may have imagined it to be the normal, default setting for any society; any instance of tyranny must be due to some interference with the natural progress of freedom, and the removal of that interference would allow that progress to resume.
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Paradoxically, people establish a democratic republic because they understand that so much is at stake, but a democratic republic cannot function unless very little is at stake. A party or a person must be exposed to the real possibility of defeat in elections, and if voted out of office, must leave quietly and with as much grace as can be managed. This is only possible because the change in office will not result in show trials, disappearances, confiscations, and mass graves. We have to trust each other to an extraordinary extent, and we have to deserve the trust of each other.There is not much mutual trust in Iraq.