Iraq is nearly over. BTW we won.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I said back in '03 or '04 around here that the final victory in Iraq would not be ours, but necessarily must be the Iraqis'. What we should do is to set up the conditions for a victory by the globalizer Iraqis, the democratic Iraqis who got themselves a bellyful of undemocracy under Saddam and his ilk and are now ready to try something else, and something better: a more democratic social order. We should set it up so this victory is in the end inevitable -- at least so far as that may be possible. The thing that makes social science so much less than a science, and social engineering so much less than engineering, is that the fundamental unit of social science is not a molecule, but a self-willed organism. Organisms actively seek their own advantage, and this kind of behavior is what fuzzes up the results in social science. It reduces a socalled science to an art, and we're stuck with that.

And back then, I expected that the timing of our eventual and always-expected departure would be controversial: some would argue too late, others would say too early, more work is needed yet, and almost no one would claim in print (at the time) that it was timed about right.

This Barnett guy seems to offer some pretty cagey ideas for how to pursue this kind of strategy not merely in Araby, but globally -- shrinking the Non-Integrating Gap, as he puts it, nation by nation, increment by increment, developmental stage by developmental stage -- these stages being essentially economic ones, the most earthshaking of which is the rise of a numerous middle class, in places that never had them before. Education of women is another essential, and often catalytic to the required social growth. It is also the one thing our antiglobalist foes oppose most bitterly -- and locally and temporarily, with greatest success.