Sebastian

Matthew Yglesias has an interesting post:

Indeed, I would say that the major flaw of American efforts at democracy-promotion is a failure to recognize that the bipartisan tradition of realpolitik was not some fifty-year long silly error. I think it’s true that, some time ago, this ceased to be a viable strategy and that we ought to revise it. Still, there are many things to be said in its favor. People need to really think about that before they advocate abandonning it. If you’re prepared to give up the gains of dictator-promotion (and I am) then you need to face up to what you’re doing. What Bush has been trying to do is discover a cost-free democracy-promotion scheme. Thus you get the very odd Iraq bank-shot.

This is half-way to a really good point. The problem is that all sides use rhetoric implying that there is some sort of cost-free or super-cheap democracy promotion scheme. An uncharitable view of Bush’s rhetoric would be that you invade Iraq and PRESTO you get a U.S.-friendly democracy right afterwards. Obviously he never says any such thing directly, but the fact that he never outlines the (rather significant) costs makes it an implication (perhaps a fair implication, perhaps not). Many of Bush’s opponents, especially in Europe, seem imply that if only the U.S. would quit fucking up, PRESTO democracy or at least peace would come to the Middle East. This is closely related to the fantasy that if only the U.S. would apply pressure to Israel that peace would come to the Middle East. Obviously they don’t say so directly, but the fact that they never outline steps about the significant changes that would need to come about other than the U.S. not fucking things up makes it an implication (perhaps a fair implication, perhaps not).

While each side may decide to tacitically deny the difficulty of the project, I think in their more candid moments each realizes that the Middle East has to be changed and that the changes are likely both to be very difficult to implement and very costly for the West.

But neither side wants to deal with difficult and costly, that doesn’t sell well.

So many on the right act as if a quick war will bring democracy to the Middle East and the left act as if a lack of Western military action will bring peace to the Middle East. And any useful debate fails to occur.

Let me be clear in my views:

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Now that I have my angry post out of the way I want to talk about 9/11 and policing.

The US is a country with one of the largest unsecured borders in the world. It is also one of the most open large societies in the world. This has many advantages: an economy so excellent that people are willing to immigrate to become what counts as poor here, an intellectual culture so vibrant that we make an outsized number of the world’s scientific discoveries, the freedom to move about a huge and varied land mass for almost any reason imaginable. But terrorism exploits this openness.

Let me first be clear about my understanding of 9/11:

I don’t believe it could have been stopped by acceptable levels of increased security. I don’t believe it would have been stopped by the current levels of security, and we are willing to put up with far more than we would have before the attack.

I believe it is highly unlikely that it would have been stopped by ‘increased intelligence’ in any level which we would have found acceptable before 9/11. One of the most intensive intelligence capabilities in the history of the world, employed during the Cold War, still missed Soviet moles in some of our most sensitive branches of government. Long-term undercover agents penetrating our most secretive branches ought to be somewhat easier to detect over decades than the relatively short-term (1-3 years) planning employed by the 9/11 attackers who merely need to get into the country. Yet still there were agents who went undetected for years and years.

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