# Posted 10:22 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

BEYOND REGIME CHANGE: The Outlook section in this Sunday's WaPo features a series of five essays on the aftermath of the war in Iraq.

As the co-founder of OxDem, I found the essays thoroughly depressing. Taken as whole, the essays' message is that there is little hope for promoting democracy in Iraq or in the Middle East. Fortunately, the logic on which this message rests is absurd to the point of self-contradiction.

Wesley Clark spends most of his time explaining why Iraq is not Japan and why we cannot expect to transform it via military occupation. According to Clark,

The circumstances of Japan and its transformation bear so little resemblance to those of present-day Iraq that both the analogy and the pursuit of a new MacArthur are off the mark. Almost nothing from the lessons of postwar Japan can be applied directly to Iraq, and consequently, neither the approach nor the character of a MacArthur are appropriate for the mission in Iraq. Just consider the facts.

By September 1945, Japan was defeated militarily, culturally and economically...Its armed forces were whipped, with remnants scattered throughout Southeast Asia, China and the Pacific. Its major cities were flattened, its vaunted pride was broken, and its economy was in shambles. It had suffered millions of casualties...

Pardon me, General, but that description of Japan's total defeat seems to fit Iraq perfectly. Except that Iraq's casualties will have come mostly at the hands of Saddam Hussein.

Clark is right to point out that Japan was ethnically unified whereas Iraq is diverse, in both ethnic and religious terms. Yet as Andrew Cockburn points out in his essay, uninformed Western observers have ignored considerable evidence that Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish Iraqis are ready to share a single state. Yes, he is referring to you, General Clark.

Adopting a regional perspective, Youssef Ibrahim insists that promoting democracy in the Middle East will accomplish nothing more than bringing violent fundamentalists to power. This, however, is an argument that OxBlog has been in the process of dismantling since December.

Ibrahim draws his evidence mostly from Egypt and Algeria. Had he taken the time to read over Oxblog's in-depth posts on Egypt and Algeria, he might have recognized that the evidence he focuses on is thoroughly misleading.

Ibrahim also mentions in passing both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which OxBlog has also profiled as part of its ongoing series on democracy and Islam. Once again, Ibrahim's evidence is far from persuasive.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of Ibrahim's essay is the author's willingness to trust Hosni Mubarak's assertion -- made in private conversation with the author -- that democratic reforms in Egypt will provoke a fundamentalist backlash. Apparently, Ibrahim is so naive that he doesn't recognize how Mubarak and other dictators have systematically exaggerated the fundamentalist threat in order to prevent the United States from demanding democratic reforms.

Yet as OxBlog has insisted time and again, it is the dictators themselves who are holding back the establishment of democracy in the Middle East. While it might be foolish for Mubarak or Assad to suddenly resign and hold elections, there is no reason to think that a gradual transition to democracy would promote a fundamentalist backlash. Rather, a gradual transition will show the people of the Middle East that they do not have to choose between secular dictators and Islamic radicals. Instead, they can reject both and govern themselves.

The final pair of essays in the Post, by Robert Kuttner and Max Boot, provide left- and right-wing approaches to international order in the aftermath of war. What is sad about both essays is that neither focuses on the importance of democratic reform for preventing international conflict.

Kuttner's essay confirms that the anti-war left has no intention of speaking out on behalf of the Iraqi people once the war is over. Rather, it will focus on protesting against "the Bush administration's plans for global hegemony." Forget the starving Iraqi children that were a staple of the protesters' rhetoric. Let someone else take care of them.

While Max Boot's essay is as firmly conservative as Kuttner's is liberal, Boot rises above the simplistic UN-bashing that conservative commentators so often indulge in. His wisest advice to conservatives is not to abandon those allies who voice their resentment of American power. While rhetorical attacks are unpleasant, the behavior of such allies demonstrates that they expect the United States to be the ultimate guarantor of international security. Or as OxBlog put it,

In time, the current Euro-American rift will become yet another memorial to the unprecedented flexibility of alliances between democratic nations. It was that flexibility that ensured our victory in the Cold War, and which will ensure our victory in the war on terror.

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