March 28, 2006
"The undertaking [establishing democracy in Iraq] is enormous, ambitious and arrogant. It may yet fail."For Fukuyama to assert that I characterized it as "a virtually unqualified success" is simply breathtaking. My argument then, as now, was the necessity of this undertaking, never its ensured success. And it was necessary because, as I said, there is not a single, remotely plausible, alternative strategy for attacking the root causes of Sept. 11: "The cauldron of political oppression, religious intolerance, and social ruin in the Arab-Islamic world -- oppression transmuted and deflected by regimes with no legitimacy into virulent, murderous anti-Americanism."
Fukuyama's book is proof of this proposition about the lack of the plausible alternative. The alternative he proposes for the challenges of Sept. 11 -- new international institutions, new forms of foreign aid and sundry other forms of "soft power" -- is a mush of bureaucratic make-work in the face of a raging fire. Even Berman, his sympathetic reviewer, concludes that "neither his old arguments nor his new ones offer much insight into this, the most important problem of all -- the problem of murderous ideologies and how to combat them."
Plus, Fukuyama apparently made shit up for America at the Crossroads, which is rather bad form.
Via Insty, who remarks, "not that his history of being wrong about, well, pretty much everything has hurt Fukuyama's career so far."
Posted by: Attila Girl at
11:51 AM
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Posted by: Averroes at March 29, 2006 03:06 AM (jlOCy)
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