One of the posters I respect most on the small discussion board I normally frequent, made the interesting point that, while victory is possible in a military conflict, cultural transformation is not. With all due respect, the point does not reflect recent history. For the discussion as to whether a culture can be transformed was a matter of huge world-wide deabte not so long ago.
You might remember both cultures. One of them wore spiky helmets, goose stepped through Europe, and started two World Wars within three decades. The other invented ritual disembowelment as a form of suicide, preferred the most hideous death to the most honorable surrender, and for the first four decades of the last cerntury attributed divinity to a mortal man. If anyone had suggested in 1935 that either of these relentlessly authoritarian, militaristic cultures would be transformed into functional democracces within two decades, the Paul Krugmans of the day (Walter Lippman) would have laughed them to scorn. Yet between 1945 and 1955, that is exactly what happened. It happened despite the existence of the Cold War, and the relentless slander of Soviet propaganda that sounded as loudly as an off-key brass band in those years.
In my opinion, there were two reasons for this. Military victory was not one of them - plenty of nations have triumphed militarily and adminstered the vanquished people in such a way that it reinforced all of their cultural idosyncracies. Although it is not the Fourth of July, I am going to rhapsodize a bit. I think the first reason is that all of that Declaration of Independence stuff this nation was found upon actually does apply in real life. The vast majority of flesh and blood human beings could care less about the Holy See of Rome, the Caliphate, the worker's paradise, or the Master Race. What matters to them is whether they can live their lives in decent security and advance their own interests in a basic manner - pursue happiness, in a phrase. They gravitate naturally towards instituitions that make that possible. The US occupation in Germany and Japan made the creation of that institutions - i.e., in Joyce's phrase, waking up from the nightmare of history - possible.
The second reason is that the American military is fully accultured. That is, American soldiers do not behave imperially, because this is not in fact an imperial society. It has no racial center. It has no territorial imperatives. It is resented by every power elite in the world because the social infrastructure is not based (in theory) on elites. That resentment is rationalized in endless sophistry, but the resentment is always has that base.
It was not until 1949 that some French historian noted that both the major Hegelian movements (Communism and Naziism) were at base the same authoritarian, anti-populist movement, and both deserved the label 'fascist'. Another fact once common knowledge that has been forgotten is how dangerous in practice these movements actually are. The core Nazi and Bolshevik cadres were small, and numerically overwhelmed. But they were ruthless and unsocialized (wives and children, at least as major influences and motives, are conspicuous in their absence) and prevailed. The weight of numbers does not equate to political force when force of arms is involved.
The 'cultural transformation' of Iraq is to my way of thinking no less achievable then Germany and Japan. All it means is the creation of institutions that actually reflect popular will. The notion that the Iraqi people are condemned to endless civil war and sectarian battle is at base a crude racial slander.. The elements obstructing the formation of such institution are fascists - not revolutionaries, or freedom fighters, but the same sort of violent elitists as the ones Europeans became familiar with at such wearisome length in the last century.
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