The Not-So-Quiet Americans

President Bush believes that getting rid of Saddam Hussein will bring democracy to the Middle East. “A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region,” he said yesterday. A nice idea, but as The Washington Post points out, the liberation of Kuwait more than a decade ago was expected to make that country more democratic, and it hasn’t; women still can’t vote, they can’t go to college with men, and political parties are not allowed. “Nobody believes the war will bring democracy to the Arab world,” a Kuwaiti professor says. “Look at Kuwait. I don’t buy it.”

Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.