While we study the French Revolution I can't help but think how conditions have to be just right for sweeping social and political changes of that kind to take place in a society or country. Even then it usually results in a huge mess that takes decades to really sort itself out into a system that can be sustained. Our own revolution was no different. Once we had our independence it still took us a long time to develop a sense of of nationalism, and for us to figure out how our system of government was going to work. That's why I don't think our attempts at nation building in our own image in places like Iraq and Afghanistan will ever be what we would consider successful.

Ignoring the issue of whether we should have gone to war in either country, what we are basically trying to do in Iraq and Afghanistan is force a form of cultural and political revolution in the hopes that it will prevent both countries from becoming rogue nations that breed things like terrorism. All of this of course is on top of the fact that they give us strategic access to a region of the world where we desperately want to project U.S. power and influence. The question is before we came a knocking down their doors, did the citizens of either country want to live in a western style democracy? Granted, the majority of people in both countries weren't exactly happy with who was in charge at the time when we showed up, but they also weren't secretly pining away for political party fundraisers, conventions and equality among all of their citizens either.

My point (I think I have one) is that I believe the people have to be ready for a revolution of that magnitude to take place, and for it to be what we would consider successful and sustainable. Iraq has a better shot at having a stable, lasting government because it was a much more modern country to begin with. A lot of the infrastructure needed to sustain a democracy was already in place (of course we blew a lot of that up), and everyone knows we've spent billions on trying to rebuild and improve Iraq. I'm just not sold on having a small group of Western educated elites trying to run and maintain a democracy whose citizenry is composed of three distinct groups that, to put it mildly, don't get along. Most of them have a greater sense of loyalty to their ethnic/religious groups than they do to the country of Iraq. Only time and the interests of other nations, such as Iran and ourselves, will tell if Iraq can become a truly independent democracy, able to stand on its own. It could just as easily become a puppet state or mired in a horrible civil war.

Afghanistan is an entirely different story. Tribal loyalty is everything to most of its citizenry, and I believe the majority of them don't care anything about having the right to vote or a strong centralized form of government. They just want to be left alone in what they consider their inherited tribal territories, and continue to live a lifestyle that hasn't changed much in the last 100 years. So God help them now that all of that mineral wealth has been found within their borders. Now every world power will want in, regardless of whether they have some kind of flaccid democracy propped up by our support or just a strongman who keeps things together through fear and punishment. Once our support is gone I don't see any form of strong central government lasting there. That's why we may be in Afghanistan, in some form or another, for at least our lifetimes.

At the heart of all of this is that I don't think we actually stopped and took the time to ask the people of Iraq or Afghanistan what they wanted in the ways of a government and social reforms. Even though we were supposedly "liberating" them, we just went ahead and crammed our style of government and values down their throat. In the end I just don't think an outside power can manufacture a social and political revolution that serves its own interests and not those of the people it's supposedly trying to help.