By the way, pursuant to my comments about the economic drain caused by the Iraq war, here is a recent article from The New York Times on the subject:

http://tinyurl.com/2qgy8q

The articles notes that the Bush administation initially expected the invasion and aftermath to cost around $50 and $60 billion total. Hah! Now, the Pentagon has estimated the costs so far at $600 million and counting.

I had heard of yearly estimates of $245 billion a year, but apparently, I was mistaken; that amount was meant for the next year or two. See this site:

http://majorityleader.house.gov/docUploads/BushBudgetIraq0708.pdf

Anyway, according to this Times article, economists estimate the longterm costs of the Iraq war and aftermath to be anywhere from $1 or $2 billion to (in the case of one economist) as high as $4 billion.

Here are your options:

a) You can indulge in a knee-jerk dismissal of this information, saying that The New York Times is a knee-jerk lefty newspaper so everything it writes is suspect, and therefore nothing it publishes should be given any attention.

b) You can dismiss this information by saying that these economists must be knee-jerk lefties (albeit one a Nobel Prize winner, although, of course, the Nobel committee is a bunch of...), and so what they say shouldn't be given any attention.

c) You can answer with a "what price freedom" argument, saying that these hundreds of millions, these trillions of dollars, were absolutely totally necessary to defend our "freedom." This answer, of course, would ignore the fact that, just because an invasion was justified by a reference to defending freedom and defeating terrorism, that doesn't mean the action was really justified even for those ends.

Again, I'll note that the drain on our economy caused by Iraq, added to the other weaknesses we've allowed to develop, will only hurt Americans further. Add to that the strain on the military itself. The army is stretched to the limit, with soldiers forced to serve multiple tours of duty. So, they're hampered now if any crises should emerge.

Look, you're conservatives, and you have every right to your opinions. I'm not arguing against that at all. (And I enjoy your podcasts nonetheless.) It's just that it wouldn't have to overly challenge your worldview to understand that not all things good are on one side and all things bad on the other. This is not a black-and-white world, with everything clear and no shades of grey.

"...the Pentagon has estimated the costs so far at $600 million and counting."

That should be $600 billion, not million. Sorry

Oh, sure. Talk about the economy of the Iraq war, not the fact that I got to host SNN this week.

'cause it's not like anyone noticed, or anything.

I'll just sit here. Alone. In the dark.

OK, Meryl, I'm sorry. You did a great job. Really.  :-)

Don't look at me, I think lavishing all that blood (and money, but really lets focus on the blood of the youth of US, Brit, Aussie and other supporting nations) on undeserving people who show no signs of their own initiatives towards being free (truly free) was a waste.

Sure, put a bullet in Saddam, good, it's a start but frankly trying to democratize Islam is a waste of everyone's time, our, theirs, everyone.

Better to accept that Islam engenders a kind of belief that can't be controlled by outsiders so best to leave them alone. Unless they pose a mortal threat in which case fight, fight, fight, until it is clear that any threat will be met with overwhelming force and violence. Oh, and lets try to cut back on paying our money to those who would see us dead in a heart beat.

But helping them? Good G-d what have we come to. The enemy is not all Muslims, but until some Muslims start fighting (with guns against the other sort of Muslims) for their own "moderate" Islam, why on earth should we do the dirty, bloody work.

Brian

OK, Brian, but you're not going to make points by resorting to caricature, especially a caricature that misses by a mile. I never said that the Iraqis weren't worth it, that they weren't capable of democracy. Of course they are, eventually. But by that logic, why don't we liberate the North Koreans, the Iranians, the Sudanese, the Cubans, the Zimbabweans...oh, and a good deal of sub-Saharan Africa while we're at it. And the Chinese, and the Vietnamese, and the Burmese, and the Libyans, Algerians, Syrians...

I think you get the idea. Saddam Hussein was a monster, granted. But perhaps invading a country that we understood little about, with no idea about how to build a new polity from scratch, was not the most brilliant idea around. And, as I imply above...why Iraq particularly? As if the world weren't filled with nasty regimes that we have no power to overthrow. And why now? The theories that Saddam Hussein had meaningful links to Al Qaeda and that he had WMD's ready to be launched are now in tatters. Unlike most people, I'm not totally convinced that the invasion was about oil. So I don't know what moved Bush to just up and invade Iraq. No, it wasn't a burning desire for democracy for the Iraqi people; that pablum was meant for the American public. So, what then? Who the hell knows.

It might come as a surprise to you Brian, but the US and Britain do not have the necessary strength, wherewithal or know-how to defeat every last tyrant, and to free every last people that we imagine wants to be free. Uh, "free" by our definition, that is. And we're not freeing Iraqis. That's the sad part. They had tyranny, and now they have chaos. As goes Afghanistan, so will go Iraq. Only Halliburton will have gained substantially from this adventure.

Should we pander to these rulers, like the Swiss, who've just cut a neat gas deal with Ahmedinejad? [see http://tinyurl.com/2eq79l]  No, of course not. Although the US and other Western states doe that when it suits. Should we try to undermine them through our use of intelligence and some low-grade, below-the-radar means? Perhaps.

Anyway,  please don't imply that I'm applying a soft racism towards the Iraqis. That's really not very fair. Don't put words in my mouth, and don't read any meaning into my comment that wasn't there. Just address the points that I do--quite validly-- raise. Thank you. [Hah! Another conservative foiled again...He he he]

Joanne,

In all seriousness I agree with just about everything you've written except the following line:

I never said that the Iraqis weren't worth it, that they weren't capable of democracy. Of course they are, eventually. 

I'm saying they aren't worth it and that (in their present form) they aren't capable of democracy. I don't believe they're capable of democracy until the writings of Mohammad have been accepted as a gross distortion of the Hebrew Bible (with bits of the story of Jesus thrown in). And all Muslims have accepted that. If that fits in your timeframe of "eventually" good luck. It's not going to be in my lifetime.

There are no Arab Muslim democracies and precious few Muslim democracies and those are all subject to reversion back to totalitarian theocracies at any moment. I said it a few shows back: Islam is a giant bungee cord tying Muslims to the 7th Century. As far as they get from barbarity, eventually the cord tightens and whips them back.

The less contact we have with the ideology of Islam the better. Why station troops in a country when you can fly over it and drop bombs? Stop helping Islam destroy the West.

Brian of London

Oh... and as for you list of dictators we should depose. We should be helping all those people on your list who do not follow Islam. South Korea (imperfect as it is) proves the point that North Koreans would know what to do if you gave them freedom.

Africa desperately needs the rule of law and equality of all people (to counter corruption). These are gifts from Moses and only the non-Muslim world will appreciate them for the foreseeable future.

Brian of London

Oops, sorry Brian, it was I who misunderstood you. I thought you were doing a riff on what I seemed to be saying. I didn't realize that you were speaking from the heart.

I have the impression that Islam is part of the problem, but I'm also wondering if another part of the problem is the fact that Arab society is structured on a clan basis. The Arabs reputedly have a saying that goes something like, "It is I against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, and my brother, cousin and I against anyone else." With a culture like this, it is hard to foster cooperation across broad swathes of society, to have any trust for governmental or judicial institutions, or to have any governmental or judicial institutions deserving of trust. It's hard to build a complex economy that requires the rule of law with little or no corruption, or, indeed to engage in any endeavors that require self-sacrifice for the sake of others or to realize longterm goals. As a result, you can't build very much at all.

This reminds me of the classic book by Almond and Verba, from the early 1960's called Civic Society. It was a comparative study of five or six countries, showing how political cultures may differ even from one democracy to another. I remember, for instance, that the Italian political culture was termed "familial amoralism," meaning that the government was a far-off hostile presence to be ignored, resisted or fooled, and that only one's own family deserved one's loyalty. Anyone outside the family was an adversary. I wonder if the Arab political culture may be an extreme version of this old Italian model (I don't know if it applies to Italy, anymore).

I also think that, because reputation is sacrosanct in Arab culture, there is a tremendous pressure to conform to society's mores, rather than question them or depart from them in any way. I guess that's they mean by "shame" culture. Of course, this applies to Arab countries. But maybe the spread of Islam to other Muslim countries also meant the spread of  Arab culture to some extent, thus shaping social structures and political values in Bengladesh, Indonesia, etc.  I don't know.

Another idea just for the hell of it: In Irshad Manji's book The Trouble with Islam,the author speaks of a period during the Middle Ages when Islam was far more open and inquisitive, with a prevailing ethic of independent reasoning that was called ijtihad. But, she says, this fell openness and pluralism fell apart because of the desire to close ranks among the Sunni in their fight against the Christians in Spain and the Shi'ites in the east.  It's a great book. She is Muslim but very, very liberal. She has to be; she's a lesbian.

Two interesting sites, though again, they're talking about Arab culture, not the Muslim world as a whole, are: www.theaugeanstables.com,  where Professor Richard Landes talks about  "prime divider societies," in which the norm is to grab more riches for oneself or one's family, rather than creating something new; and http://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com, where the psychiatrist blogger looks at the Arabs from a psychological point of view. He's recently done a series of blogs (called "The Arab Mind," after Raphael Patai's book) that looks at child rearing practices in the Arab world, and how they may shape the political culture there.

Great job Meryl.

Meryl,

great job, well done. Cooties obviously not a hindrance :-)

Joanne: is it Islam or Arabism that's the root problem?

The arabic clan system is clearly a hindrance to the economic and political development of Arab cultures; the effects of clan systems are worthy of study and discussion.

I recently read Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel' which describes many of the prejudices and other problems of the clan system in Somalia - but this is African clans, not Arab clans, though both Islamic. However, there are many non-islamic cultures in Africa that have a clan system. I'm sure the clan system operates as a stumbling block to development in these cultures too; but the non-islamic clans (or tribes) are not tied to an immutable 7th century system of totalitarian government and law, nor do they have a superiority complex regarding the rest of humanity, or expectations of global domination to be realized through war and terrorism outside their lands, and totalitarian rule and religious oppression inside their lands.

In short, whilst tribalism may be at the root of current troubles in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa, it is only Islamism not clanism that, looking inward, is tied to self oppression and the dark ages, and looking outward, is bent on global domination.