When I read stuff like this from Josh Marshall, I have to wonder whether higher education is really all it's cracked up to be. The argument that democratizing Iraq will be impossible because Iraq isn't like Japan and Germany and we won't have inflicted enough damage to crush their spirits.

His assumptions are as follows:

[V]irtually everyone now agrees that winning the peace means replacing Saddam Hussein�s regime with a democratic, pro-western government in Baghdad.The debate over whether this is feasible has focused mainly on America�s successful efforts to rebuild Japan and Germany after World War II.

Both of these points are strawmen. Certainly a democratic regime would be desirable, but I haven't heard anybody claim that it must be democratic to be acceptable. Secondly, the discussion of how to go about developing a new government has cited Japan and Germany as evidence that building a modern state from the rubble is possible, but to say that it can only be done if we have totally demoralized the people and destroyed their faith in earlier regimes, is not something I have heard from anyone else.

On the contrary, I have heard that a new regime will have accommodate the tribal leaders and regional stong men, and that to manage the feuding and struggles for power or iindependence, we may need to pick someone to back as we did in Afghanistan. Iraq may not be as modern or industrialized as Germany and Japan were, but it is much more advanced that Afghanistan was.

This piece is the pseudo-argument of a diehard who has lost the debate, but continues to spin sophistries when everyone else has moved on. How pathetic.

What gives him or anyone the idea, after what we did in Afghanistan, that we would now revert to an approach from 60 years ago? This scenario would fit the supercilious attitude of many academics who smugly dismiss men like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Powell as too stupid to even debate. It's so much easier to put words in their mouths and then point out how foolish they sound. But this isn't World War II, or Korea or Vietnam, or even the first Gulf War. The military is now much more professional, educated and canny than it has ever been. People with liberal arts backgrounds who try to dismiss them this way are bound to trip over their own shoelaces. They should realize that they are no longer on the stage by themselves. The media is now include conservative and libertarian commentators on AM radio, magazines like National Review and the Weekly Standard, Fox News Channel on cable tv, and now, the blogosphere. This kind of snooty lecture won't be given a free ride anymore. We'll be reading more about Marshall's piece in the next few days, and he will be humiliated.
There are smart, articulate people now who can point out such