The Jetsons Vs. The Flintstones

The middle east is, by modern standards, a basket case, on life support provided by oil and foreign aid. Corrupt leaderships and a society that is still living a life that is much closer to the stone age than the modern age creates a population that probably simply isn't ready for democracy.

There are a few Western crazy ideas, and one of them, that seems to have become rather dogmatic in recent years, is that Democracy is the panacea to the world's ills. Thing is, it took centuries for most cultures to manage to reach a state of Democracy, and as a general rule, it was a bloody path to dem0cracy, filled with missteps. France tried it after America, had a really bloody revolution, and then installed an emperor when they didn't like it. Germany and Italy tried it, and then moved on to Fascism, England's monarchy lurched into it, with the monarchy only giving up its traditional power after plenty of bloodshed. Russia tried it, and promptly moved to totalitarianism (or if you prefer, communism).

So, why do we think that Democracy can manage to survive in Afghanistan or Iraq? What does democracy offer the people?

Prosperity seems to be rather directly linked to the success of Democracy in most cases. Democracies seem to work best when you have a lot of shopkeepers that are interested in building wealth. When you have lots of poor folks that are interested in eating dinner, Democracy has trouble. The middle east has lots of poor folks.

To make matters worse though, Western society tends to belittle poor folk. So, the question is what opportunity do the dirt farmers really see in their future? What do they even want?

In modern Western Society, there is a sense of striving to improve on the past. A future that is brighter and shinier than the present is the goal. Western economies, and interest, is a foundation of that principle. But life wasn't always that way. There was a time when the goal was to live a life like dear old dad's. Same place, same thing was a way of life, and THE way of life to come.

The problem really is that if the flintstones didn't know better, they would slowly move their way along their own cultural evolutionary path, have famines, riots, wars, etc. But unfortunately for them, the modern world is out there, and it doesn't want them to go through all that. Famine, genocide, civil war, and other sociological growing pains are frowned upon by wealthy nations. Of course, "helping" them out doesn't let them really work it out either. And often, as Somalia shows, will lead to the people being helped resenting those that attempt to help them.

The big fish in the little pond are going to resent the whale, they always have. At this moment in history, America is the biggest fish. If it wasn't for Oil, the entire middle east would be a bloody little sandbox that holds no interest for the United States at all, much like Africa IS at this point in history.

An interesting little paradox might be that Saddam, who wanted to bring the Middle East to the table of the modern world under his control may have been the right man for the job of modernizing and stamping out fundamentalist fervor. The United States doesn't have the will to cause the sort of bloodshed that such a transition will require. And for that matter, the rewards to be had from such a conquest, at least for the United States, just aren't worth the cost. What the United States is attempting is a sort of assimilation to democracy, acting almost like an ideological "Borg" state seeking to impose Western democracy on a state in order to give said state an American stamp of approval. But there is not much of a carrot associated with Democracy, and neither is there a lot of "stick" for not going along with it.

Poverty can lead to despair, and the middle eastern leaders have done a good job of channeling that despair against Israel and the United States. There is certainly a religious overtone to it, and current religious dogma from a fundamentalist view is something that modern Westerners have turned away from, and so can't really understand very well. It is clear that the armies of the middle east really have no chance against the West. They couldn't take on Israel when they banded together, they haven't a prayer against the United States. So, if they can't die valiantly on a battlefield, if a suicide bomber can inflict equal, or greater casualties (assuming you make no distinction between civilian and military) than a battlefield scenario, the only question at that point is whether you can get enough suicide bombers to achieve your objective.

Personally, I'm wondering what will happen when suicide bombers take the more western approach to this, and decide to go on shooting sprees. They could always blow themselves up when they run out of ammo, or even have a timer on themselves in case they get too wounded to push the button themselves.

Fortunately, it seems that there really aren't all that many protestors willing to blow themselves up, and whoever is exhorting/training them hasn't really gone and evaluated how to best use the resources they do have.