On the topic of historical amnesia, anyone remember the last time someone tried to implant democracy in an oil-rich Middle Eastern country that had just crawled out from under a repressive autocratic regime? Technically, it's North Africa, but in terms of political culture, Algeria in 1991 had much more in common with today's Iraq than we remember. Long story short, the Islamist party won the country's first open elections. The military freaked at the thought of the Islamists running the government and decided to take over instead. The Islamist party fought back, sparking a ten year civil war which killed over 160,000 soldiers and civilians.
Al-Qaeda hasn't forgotten Algeria in 1991, and that means we can't either. Good thing we're putting as much time and effort into building civil society and a democratic infrastructure in Iraq as we are building up the military there. Oh wait, we're not.
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