If you've never read Dear Raed, today is the day to start. This blog is updated from within Baghdad by an Iraqi citizen, and his writing is precise and insightful. Today's entry is a scathing indictment of the international dumb-show that has more or less destroyed his country lead us to the brink of war.

What is bringing on this rant is the question that has been bugging for days now: how could “support democracy in Iraq” become to mean “bomb the hell out of Iraq”? why did it end up that democracy won’t happen unless we go thru war? Nobody minded an un-democratic Iraq for a very long time, now people have decided to bomb us to democracy? Well, thank you! how thoughtful.

The rest of it is even better. Salam takes on the sanction, the rise of fundimentalism and tribalism, and basically takes the west to task for half-assing his country to death. It's on the money. If there's anything that Afghanistan, Iraq and N. Korea can tell us is that's when you isolate nations, leave them without hope and let them marinate in dispair and lies, bad things happen. That was also the lession of Post-WWI Germany too, now that I think of it, but I've called a truce on any Hitler-related analogies, so I'll let that one lie. What we need now is a strident policy of engagement, a worldwide program to promote peristroyka. Instead we've got the Cowboy in Cheif, alienating the world and embittering people against us with his policy of violence.

Direct engagement can work. It's what about the demise of the USSR... flood the black market with American Culture, drop the punative sanctions, keep up inspections to keep Hussein on his toes, contain, deter, engage, and most of all let the people prosper again. When the people are strong and can support themselves, they will be able to cast off the shackles of dictatorship. This goes for Cuba too, by the way. Punative sanctions keep dictators in power -- they keep populations weak and provide dictators with endless excuses for hardship. Indigenous progress towards democracy is possible. It's happening in Iran right now, though Bush set that movement back about 5 years with that Axis of Evil bullshit, and now they're geting (justifiably) paranoid that they're going to be next. If only we had someone who could see this, who wanted to really be involved in ushering in a new era of progress and prosperity rather than just being the biggest kid on the playground and consolidating his power. It's tough time to be an American.

In other news, I'm in search of our contender for 2004. I've said it before and I'll say it again, these people have had their way long enough. It's time for them to go. If you've got ideas on who I should back and how I should back them for 2004, please chime in.