It is healthier for the disillusioned American to concede that in one theater in the Mideast, the postulates didn’t work. The alternative would be to abandon the postulates. To do that would be to register a kind of philosophical despair. The killer insurgents are not entitled to blow up the shrine of American idealism. ~W.F. Buckley, NRO

Via Antiwar Blog.

I suppose this is Buckley’s way of offering Mr. Bush a face-saving way out: “It’s not our wild-eyed optimistic ideas that are really out of whack–it’s those damn Arabs! Anybody else would have jumped at the chance of Freedom and maybe even made it work. Nice try, Mr. President. Let’s try somewhere else!” Of course, this is half true.

This “idealism” failed in Iraq because of both the idealism and the Iraqis together and because of their basic incompatibility. This is not necessarily to say something against the Iraqis–the managerial and welfarist state model with elections and rampant individualism attached that we frequently call democracy is not something I would inflict on my worst enemy, so it is not necessarily a knock on the Iraqis that they are not making a go of it.

Far from being the world-conquering, inevitable force of Fukuyamian historical evolution that some imagine it to be, this model is deeply flawed, in many respects contrary to human nature and incredibly fragile and in need of a very particular environment. We may as well plant an orchid in the desert and then condemn the sand for failing to help it grow–instead, why not blame the buffoon who put an orchid in the desert?

But that begs the question whether there are suitable environments for this orchid in many parts of the world. After being disproved enough times, it may be that the “postulates,” as Buckley calls them, really are just as false as their critics have said all along. At what point do we stop putting our faith in these “postulates,” much less continue to make them the centerpiece of our foreign policy? My answer would be to stop now and save ourselves the suspense of watching another transplanted orchid die so pitifully.