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We've been involved in Haiti for about ninety years. We occupied the country from 1915 to 1934. Subsequent Presidents (FDR, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton) tried to encourage democracy there. Yet we haven't been able to make stable, representative government take root in Haiti. How long will it take in Iraq? Perhaps Iraqis will be more like Americans or Europeans who live under elected, constitutional governments and make them work than Haitians are, but it's by no means clear that things will work out that way easily or soon.

Because we haven't tried. For most of our time there the methods we used were the same we used everywhere: put in somebody we like and defend them. We didn't care if the person was a bloodthirsty dictator so long as he was OUR bloodthirsty dictator. This was stupid and shortsighted and we've been reaping the long term benefits of that thinking since the embasy was stormed in Tehran. The new model we're trying out in Iraq and Afghanistan is completely different, it's back to the model we used after WWII in Japan and Germany which worked pretty well.

It probably won't work out easily or soon. It wasn't easy or quick in Germany or Japan, but it was worth it. Quick and easy got us into this mess, mistaking nation building for dictator propping was quick and easy, and also stupid.