Posted on 08/24/2003 7:35:49 AM PDT by Dog
I'll bet you said the same thing about Japan after WWII too, didn't you, Austin??.........You were wrong then, too, you old coot! hehe
And Gramps -- you're fined $75 for mentioning Disney that gay-friendly cartoon network.
Hakim is the uncle of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, the leader of SCIRI.
Presumably, the father's link with the elder As-Sadr is still in place, as these two Shia clerics would also be related through their father's marriages to cousins.
The As-Sadr and Hakim families used to be close, and were persecuted together by Sadaam Hussein. But the Hakims went off to Iran, in exile, got funding and turned moderate. As-Sadr, the young survivor in Iraq, is much more of a fire brand.
Moreover, both Germany and Japan are ethnically homogenous societies unlike Iraq which is ethnic stew of Kurds, Turkmen, and Arabs with little in common between them. True, Germany has the protestant/Catholic difference but it is not even close to the deep-seated differences between Shi'ites and Sunnis. Japan (your example not mine) of course, does not have these kind of religious divisions.
Finally, of course, Germany and Japan in 1945 had considerable experience with democracy or quasi-democracy. Japan had an elected parliament in the 1920s while Germany had a highly competititive party system until 1933. Even under the emperor, it had elections with opposition parties (such as the Socialists) in parlament. Iraq has no such tradition.
Germany and Japan would have turned to democracy in 1945 regardless of what the Wilsonian social planners did in Washington to "help them."
In short, your comparison does not hold water. A better analogy to current Iraq would be Bosnia or perhaps the Congo. The chances of creating unitary/democractic states in those countries (just like Iraq) is nil no matter what magic wand the whiz kids in Washington want to wave.
Sometimes, you have to realistic. The prospects for creating a "democratic/unitary state" in Iraq even in the long term (i.e. decades) are about as bright as creating such states in Bosnia, the Congo, and Liberia.
There are significant differences in the two situations. But many people didn't believe the 'medieval hellhole,' Japan, could ever become a democracy either........and it did.
I'm not convinced that heterogenous artificially constructed Iraq can successfully produce a democracy, even with our help. But what I do know is that the human spirit longs for freedom, and I'm willing to be patient and give it a chance. I will cede your point entirely in 10 or 20 years.
The largest democracy in the world is India, just a little gift from the British. And pluralism is a more prominent feature of democratic societies than "unitary." Most people in Iraq aren't Baathist or religious fanatics.
Just because there are many difficulties ahead doesn't mean it is impossible. Quite to the contrary.
India had a long history as a nation and the Indians have a centuries long sense of nationhood. Iraq (which was thrown together arbitrarily like Bosnia or the Congo) has no such history.
India was able to avoid genocidal civil war because the Muslim areas were turned into Pakistan. As a result, the Hindus are in the vast majority and it is, more or less, religiously/ethnically homogeneous. By contrast, the U.S. has vowed *not* to allow this sensible partition option to be applied Iraq. Instead, it has adopted a policy of *forcing* the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ites to stay in a unitary state.
Imagine if the British had tried to keep India together in 1947 (rather than allow the partition) and you get some sense of what the future holds in Iraq.
India is the most ethnically/religiously diverse nation on earth. It has 18 official languages plus over 1600 other spoken languages and dialects (yes, 1600), with several religious groups besides Hindu, including Muslim(12%), Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, and Zoroastrian.
India was able to avoid genocidal civil war because the Muslim areas were turned into Pakistan.
That division precipitated wholesale slaughter in which almost one million people were killed, exactly the result that opponents of partition warned about.
If you want to talk about history, a good place to start would be with accurracy of fact. We can then argue about the significance of those facts.
Still, the comparison to Iraq does not hold water. Please note that I said, "more or less," ethnically homogeneous. Why didn't you quote that part since you are so concerned about "accuracy?" More than eighty percent of India's population speak the same language and have the same religion. The Shi'ite majority in Iraq is much smaller and there are much larger minorities of Kurds, Sunnis, etc.
Again, the best comparison to Iraq is Bosnia, not India. In Bosnia, as in Iraq but not India, no one group constitutes an overwhelming majority of the population.
Lastly, I should note that even most of the many religious minorities in India you mention share a common and deep-seated sense of nationhood with the majority. This is not true in the artificial "nation" called Iraq.
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