The often brilliant Ed Luttwak is at it again, this time saying in the LA Times that democracy in Iraq has failed before it has even started:
It would be an astonishing achievement of cultural transformation if a functioning Iraqi democracy could be established in a mere 30 years, or even 60.
Luttwak’s track record with predictions isn’t terrific. On the eve of the first Gulf War Luttwak said:
“All those precision weapons and gadgets and gizmos and stealth fighters . . . are not going to make it possible to re-conquer Kuwait without many thousands of casualties.”
To be fair to Luttwak, as NRO’s Mackubin Thomas Owens pointed out in NRO:
Mr. Luttwak later claimed he had merely been trying to stimulate more innovative thinking on the part of the U.S. military…
Let’s hope Luttwak is just up to his old tricks and is trying to “stimulate more innovative thinking.” Who knows, given his track record, maybe this means we’ll have a functioning democracy in Iraq by Christmas.