A herd of little Americas running around in the Arabian sandbox

Before I get back to hyperbolating (new word!) about the alien devastation, Spielberg reeked on my mind yesterday, I'd like to point to this insightful commentary from everyone's favorite (well, except James Wolcott) stew of conservative yucking, The Corner. This is what John Derbyshire worries about regarding the President's attitude towards Iraq:

It is one part of the fundamental American creed that any person can be made into an American. With some basic exclusions -- "any person" should not be a drug addict, an ax murderer, a committed Marxist-Leninist, or a suicide bomber -- this is true. It's only true at the individual level, which is the level at which we do most of our thinking -- we are individualists. Ship, say, 300 million Chinese peasants to the USA, and the nation would be radically transformed... but so far I have heard of no plans by the Bush administration to do that.

It does not, however, follow that every nation can be made into America. Yet this seems to be what the President believes, unless (which I don't think is the case) he is an extraordinarily good actor. George W. Bush has completely internalized the multi-culti creed: Not only are all human beings broadly the same (true), but all human societies are broadly the same (false), or can be made so by spending some money and shipping in some management consultants and systems analysts (false, false, false).

Now, I didn't get to hear the speech on account of some tremendous, earthshaking conflicts that threatened my very existence (I forgot, and then fell asleep), but think Mr. Derbyshire's statement rings true even without Bush's most recent words.

Many of the neocon set have blundered into thinking that with a little bit of spit and polish, the U.S. can march into a country and turn it upside down with a little bit of determination and stick-to-itiveness. But producing a free-thinking Western style democracy is not the product of just a little more elbow grease; it's the result of decades, if not centuries, of cultural attunement.

Think of slavery. The racial bias it created is something we're still dealing with 150 years after the fact. Niether Iraq nor its Arab counterparts are not going to become America II without lifetimes of patience and cultural refinement. America wasn't built in a day, and two hundred years later, it's clearly still developing. Let's hope our leaders will have the foresight and patience not to expect anything more from Iraq.