December 11, 2003
He must not have been paying attention
Jack Beatty of The Atlantic Monthly has a piece criticizing Thomas Friedman's so-called "new domino effect" theory, in which he states that just as the Vietnam-era theory was wrong, so is this one. Ahem. First of all, the original domino theory held that if Communism was not fought in Vietnam, it would take over the rest of Southeast Asia. Friedman is arguing that planting a beacon of democracy in Iraq will force other Middle Eastern regimes to reform or fall. The "old" and "new" theories are thus not exactly parallel. Secondly, less than a decade after US troops pulled out of Vietnam, both Laos and Cambodia had fallen, leading in the case of the latter to one of the larger cases of genocide in the last century. Beatty's conclusion is that we should allow international and UN governance of the new Iraq. Frankly, I don't know whether or not to agree with him, as his argument has nothing to do with either historical precedent or shifting away from US interim control.
