WHY SO MANY HOPE WE WILL FAIL

Another masterfully insightful piece by Victor Davis Hanson. You really should read the whole thing here.

It is not hard to determine who wishes the United States to succeed in rebuilding Iraq along lines that will promote consensual government, personal freedom, and economic vitality: Hardly anyone. At least, few other than the Iraqi and American people.

Surely not the Baathist holdovers in the Sunni triangle. They will not only incur hatred for their past sins from a newly empowered democratic citizenry, but will also be doomed to slough off to the sidelines, since their antiquated skills — acquired through intrigue, murder, and banal bureaucracy — will be of less use in a newly structured society...

The theocrats all over the region wish us to fail as well. Modernism emanating from Iraq would undermine the strictures of the clerics, in empowering women and eroding the fossilized structures of a tribal society.

(And) what are Shiite extremists to do in Iran should their more prosperous brethren in Iraq find that freedom, affluence, and Islam are not always so incompatible after all?...

Compared to Saddam's murderous fascist regime, the Saudis' medieval monarchy was sold to us by the oil lobby as a "moderate voice." But in contrast to an emerging neighboring democracy across the border, Saudi Wahhabi theocracy might soon begin to appear downright repulsive. Who knows what might happen should the Iraq experiment succeed and Arabs flock to Iraqi universities, malls, and tourist sites — and then return home wondering why commensurate freedoms and affluence are not found there?

If I were one of the corrupt grandees of the Arab League, I would empty my capital of as many fanatics and crazed killers as possible and with dispatch export them all to Iraq, to nip all that nonsense in the bud...

Little needs be said about the U.N. After its decade-long impotence where it came to disarming Saddam, and the circus last winter concerning the American invasion of Iraq, its officials will now have no interest in seeing the United States create a just society when they themselves could not...

The U.N. has simply ceased to be the liberal, Western-inspired utopian body that arose from the ashes of World War II with the promise that reasonable, civilized nations could adjudicate differences rather than killing each other over perceived grievances. Instead, it is a mobocracy, where majority votes reflect a passive-aggressive stance toward the United States — guiltily desiring our money and support, while still eager for a televised forum in high-profile New York to pose and showcase its cheap, easy defiance of America.