Steyn implies our Iraqi democratization policy was wrong

Alex K. writes:

Here is the final paragraph of a Mark Steyn article from a few weeks ago:

“Muslims believe Islam is a religion you can convert to but not from. But America and its allies cannot endorse that: we cannot expend blood and treasure to rebuild a society in which citizens are executed because they leave the Muslim faith. If Islam is not a two-way street in the jostling market of religion, as Catholicism and Mormonism are, then it denies any possibility of a melting pot. That’s a problem not for Kabul so much as for Copenhagen and Marseilles and Toronto.”

See that second sentence: America cannot expend blood and treasure to build that kind of society. See the end: denies any possibility of a melting pot. And it’s not a problem for the Muslim majority countries where Muslims already are, it’s a problem for the West.

The main thing here is the first point. I’ve never seen Steyn come out and say that actions such as ours in Iraq and Afghanistan are unacceptable if they fail to allow religious freedom. Since our actions in those countries are evidently failing in just that way, is Steyn admitting for the first time that the strategy he has endorsed for remaking the Muslim world is failing, or doomed to fail?

And the second point is just the most vivid recent example of how he gets right up to the problem—If this is Islam then Islam is inassimilable—and as usual he says everything except the most important thing: our policy ought to be an end to Muslim immigration and to find a way to get them to leave.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 28, 2006 12:52 PM | Send