Afghanistan is dirt poor and it wouldn’t surprise me if lineage groups are tremendously important there. I don’t know that ‘tribalism’ is of much consequence in Iran. If I understand Stanley Kurtz, it tends to be in Arab countries because of the prevalence of cousin marriage, though I’ve seen complaints to the effect that Kurtz and others have exaggerated its significance vis a vis Egypt, among other places.

Now, consider the United States, Peru, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. And consider the World Bank data on them.

For all five countries, the life expectancy at birth is north of 70 years.

The country with the lowest literacy rate among them is Iraq, for whom it is 85% for the population over 15 and 93% for those between 15 and 24.

The country wherein the largest share of the labor force is deployed to agriculture is Peru, where it is 28% (it is around 18% in Iraq and Iran, 20% in Egypt). Egypt is the only country among them where the majority of the population lives in what the World Bank defines as the countryside.

Fuel and mineral exports account for less than 2% of the nominal GDP of the United States. In re Egypt, it’s < 4%; for Peru, about 10%; for Iran, about 20%; for Iraq, about 30%.

If you bracket out what's attributable to fuel and mineral exports, the ratio of per capita product at purchasing power parity to that of the United States is between 0.15 and 0.2 for Iran, Egypt, and Peru, about 0.1 for Iraq. To the extent you can compare real income flows over long time periods, the United States had per capita product in real terms about 10% of what it is today ca. 1895 and between 15% and 20% of what it is today during the 1920s.

These are lagging countries, but I would not call them primitive countries.

Iran is Persian, not Arabic. And things like the recent hijab issue show the distinction.

2. Which examples did you have in mind?

Trying to turn a primitive tribal society into a modern one. Applies to both Iraq and Afghanistan. The Shah tried it in Iran and did no better.

1. Define ‘nation building’.

2. Which examples did you have in mind?

I just had a rather nauseating experience reliving Nov 2020 in chasing down the info. Every media outlet (that came up quickly in a search) fulsomely gushed “World Breathes a Sigh of Relief!” “Welcome back, America!” etc. Truly grisly to read in light of our current situation.

But as comments above, and as the Times of Israel puts it in the headline, Bibi’s announcement was late in *hours*:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-hours-of-silence-netanyahu-and-rivlin-congratulate-biden-on-election-win/

Lopez Obrador waited until mid December. Xi Jinping of all people waited 10 days and Putin’s congratulations was also later, fwiw.

Considering how much capital Trump expended backing Netanyahu, I can see how Trump would have felt betrayed. I personally think Bibi could have been slightly more restrained in speaking of Biden, but I understand the tough position he’s in (and glad he won this election). I was disappointed at the time, though.

The events of November and December 2020 have been buried under the deluge of horrors afterwards, but I am sure Trump thought he would prevail given the stench surrounding how election night unfolded. If Trump had had the backing of the Republican establishment as a whole, I think it more than likely he’d be president today. I remember, that as strong as Tucker Carlson had been before election day, covering the Hunter laptop etc., I watched one night when he opined that there is cheating in every election, but not enough to change the outcome, and that it was no different in 2020. I knew all was lost, then.

Perhaps Republicans really did think Biden would be a return to regular order, and that they could field a less polarizing candidate in 2024, so mostly turning a blind eye was the prudent thing to do. I never for a moment (given the Covid reaction and the events of the summer of George Floyd) thought that any sort of regular order would return, not even for one second. (Still, events have moved even faster than my most pessimistic self could foresee).

Tucker Carlson seems to be at least tacitly admitting that he was wrong in 2020:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXUpT_Zjjig

I cannot “prove” that Trump won in 2020, but as Carlson points out, I shouldn’t have to. The fact that Democrats are trying to make “election denying” something criminal and disqualifying is only one of very many “tells.”

The outcome of Trump’s presidency was the flaming hell of today’s America, so I don’t necessarily want him back, unless he demonstrates that he’s got new tactics this time.

If only Tuesday night could be decisive. Dems have decreed that it will not.

Sorry to rant.

Go look at your can of Raid out in the garage and see what the antidote is.

Point is, even if you don’t have a WMD facility, certain kinds of pesticides can be tweaked to be deadly. It takes a fair amount of engineering to load them into artillery shells. But the term IED comes from the Iraq war.

And, going back a couple of paragraphs, RAID itself requires an antidote. You know what a Molotov cocktail is? Picture one with RAID’s active ingredients and without the diluting compounds.

Having a few guys running an extra shift at the RAID factory–used as a metaphor for any dangerous agricultural chemical–does not make a WMD program which would fall under the WMD protocols and be illegal. Probably. But just one level of organization above that, including storage and some method of distribution, would.

I have no idea if Saddaam bought his RAID from other sources or made his own The point is…you don’t need a formal WMD program to have WMD.