No one — NO ONE — has been saying that Arabs in their culture and religion are unsuitable to democracy. If anyone has, it has been the Right, with its support of laws and practices harassing law-abiding (and misdemeanor-committing) Arab-Americans. The concern with Iraq is completely culture-neutral; it has to do with questions of whether a formerly totalitarian state, which is under heavy influence from fundamentalists and outside influences, has a good chance of maintaining a democratic structure which was imposed from outside on an arbitrary day.
History is littered with failed democratic states that quickly morphed into one-party rule. It is not racist to note the parallels between those states and Iraq.
(This is not meant to be a comprehensive survey of the article’s dubious assumptions. Don’t read anything into anything left out.)
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Kimmitt
I am so pissed.
No one — NO ONE — has been saying that Arabs in their culture and religion are unsuitable to democracy. If anyone has, it has been the Right, with its support of laws and practices harassing law-abiding (and misdemeanor-committing) Arab-Americans. The concern with Iraq is completely culture-neutral; it has to do with questions of whether a formerly totalitarian state, which is under heavy influence from fundamentalists and outside influences, has a good chance of maintaining a democratic structure which was imposed from outside on an arbitrary day.
History is littered with failed democratic states that quickly morphed into one-party rule. It is not racist to note the parallels between those states and Iraq.
(This is not meant to be a comprehensive survey of the article’s dubious assumptions. Don’t read anything into anything left out.)