Yet More From the Latest City Journal

NRO's Stanley Kurtz takes a look at some of the possibilities for the future of Iraq:

After the war, what kind of government should the U.S. seek for post-Saddam Iraq? Foreign-policy experts are divided. As long as the new rulers don’t sponsor terror against us, one argument goes, nothing else matters. If they are autocrats, but friendly autocrats, fine. The other view holds that we can guarantee our long-term security only by forcibly democratizing Iraq, and eventually other Middle Eastern tyrannies, just as we brought democracy to defeated Japan after World War II. Given the dangers of nuclear proliferation and terror, a freedom-loving, democratic, and prosperous Middle East is essential to our future safety, in this view — no real democracies have ever gone to war with each other, after all, and we saw on September 11 what harm the citizens of “friendly” Arab autocracies can inflict on us.

But if we do decide to try to impose democracy on Iraq, it will be far harder than proponents of democratization recognize. It will entail long, unremitting U.S. effort. Pushed too fast, it could aggravate communal strife, or even usher in Islamic dictatorship. In the end, I haven’t decided if that effort will be worth it. But before we commit ourselves, we had better be quite clear about what we are getting into....

And Theodore Dalrymple writes on Shakespeare, with an extended analysis of Macbeth:

.... Shakespeare knew something that we are increasingly loath to acknowledge. There is no technical fix for the problems of humanity.

Those problems, he knew, are ineradicably rooted in our nature; and he atomized that nature with a characteristic genius never since equaled: which is why every time we moderns consult his works, we come away with a deeper insight into the heart of our own mystery....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 01/20/03 07:38:42 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.