| Wednesday, February
4, 2004 Over in Mail
I
had a few words about democracy in Iraq. One thing to note: if they have
real plebiscitary democracy in Iraq, the majority Shiites will probably vote
in an Islamic Republic. Perhaps not: there are a lot of secularists among
both Sunni and Shia Muslims and the Kurds are not particularly interested in
Islamic Law so far as I know; but there are fundamentalists among all the
races and people and clans in Iraq, and fervor counts in getting out the
vote: you can't predict the result. Or I can't.
I can predict that such a "democractic" Iraq would be a disaster for both
Iraq and the west. What we want is a humane Saddam, but we aren't likely to
get one. The iron law of dictatorship is that the worst get on top (see
Ortega y Gasset
The Revolt of the Masses for more on that).
Our goal in Iraq ought not be "democracy" and we ought to stop talking as
if it were. We don't want one man, one vote, once; we want stable rule of
law, and if that takes monarchy, or some kind of council of officers to
protect the constitution (as in Turkey) then so be it. Arabs and the people
of Mesopotamia have always been volatile through all history, and there is
no reason to suppose they won't be now. Turning over a country to a head
count is not much use.
Can we build a republic there? I don't know. Of course our very effort to
do it makes us more imperial and less republican...
My views with some opposition letters are over in mail:
Democracy in Iraq
Democracy in the Balkans
(and in general)
=====================================
Subject: Gus W. Weiss
information
In his own words.
http://bss.sfsu.edu/fischer/IR%20360/Readings/Duping%20the%20Soviets.htm
More on the Cold War...
================================
And we have
Subject:
Careful what you do with your Mac
I
always knew Mac users were a little strange; I didn't realize so many were
completely unhinged:
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,62157,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2
Richard Frost
Which, given the rather incredible story, may be good advice. Although I
have to say that I have yet to get much in the way of hostile mail from Mac
users. I posted I think the most snide letter I got. Nearly everything I
have received from Mac users has been courteous and helpful, and all my Mac
experiences have been relatively pleasant. Yes, I find myself screaming in
frustration at the Mac sometimes -- one story on that will be in the
column, having to do with Roberta's Class Reunion DVD -- but in general,
while the Mac has a different way of doing things, if you have faith that
there is a way, you will find it, and it will be easy. Usually. Not always.
When you have to go to Open Source BIOS and issue commands in a command
line interface I never suspected was there in order to get it to eject a
disk, things may have got a bit out of hand. Full story on that in the
column. But even there, Mac users were helpful and rather sympathetic, and
the moral of the story is that the Mac isn't perfect but it does have ways
inside it to get things done. Peter Glaskowsky's dictum that with the Mac it
is either easy or impossible isn't quite true: given patience and a guru you
can find ways to do things you didn't even suspect...
Meanwhile I have a new TABLET PC, the Acer C110, which I get to play with
for a while to compare to the Compaq Tablet. I am convinced Tablets are the
wave of the future. Pity Mac doesn't offer one yet.
=====================
I was reminded in another conference of a measuring unit: the milliHelen,
which is the amount of beauty required to launch one ship...
Wednesday TOP
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