NATION BUILDING

THE UNITED STATES is, apparently, engaged in a struggle to organize a mob of violent Muslims into a coherent nation in Iraq. However, one imagines that the Iraqis have at least a few things in common. Presumably, they all do not want foreigners telling them what to do; and equally they do want to keep on selling oil overseas, rather than going back to herding goats. So one thing they and we could agree about would be, for us to keep other nations from invading them.

Presumably also, they arrange to live in neighborhoods with mutual trust, so that they can go to sleep without one man in each household having to sit up with a weapon. If so, then presumably the problem boils down to keeping large numbers of faction A from fighting large numbers of faction B . . . without forgetting there is also a faction C.

We now see our way forward; divide the whole nation into parts – we might call them STATES – each with its own territory. How do we avoid there being border wars?

We ensure that the borders do not provoke conflict – that is, there must be free trade across the borders. How can this be done – if the people of State A do not trust the people of State B? We arrange for the border between States A and B to be patrolled by the people of State C, the border between States B and C by the people of State A . . . . Presumably, if the people of A grow vegetables and the people of B farm animals and the people of C catch fish, the border zones will be advantageous to the people on both sides, and even to the people patrolling the borders.

Once the people of the different States are trading together, there must arise disputes between citizens of different States. But we Americans can explain to them the solution to this problem; it is the “common law,” the law discovered by a number of separate courts that follow one another’s precedents. Whether one is a Muslim or not, you must admit that if your case has been settled in same manner as every other person’s case, you have not been wronged.

The borders between the three States and the surrounding nations would be defended by the U. S. A.; presumably, only a token U. S. force would suffice to dissuade any neighboring nation from attempting to take advantage of the weakness of a divided Iraq.

How can there be a solution as simple and obvious as this? Because – I suspect – the people out there believe, correctly, that our success is due to “democracy,” and imagine, falsely, that “democracy” means that the majority dominates over the minority. Possibly Muslims would be less hostile to us if we were more Christian, if our commandments governed only relations with strangers – if we did not forbid polygamy, thus sentencing so many women to live in solitude, if we did not have such “crimes” as statutory rape, thus denying fertile women fulfilling lives, if we did not deny the right of parents to bring up their children as they think fit, if we did not pretend that “domestic violence” is something that happens behind locked doors and curtained windows.