| Sumario: | When America invaded Iraq, its ambitions went beyond ousting Saddam Hussein. Many in U.S. President George W. Bush's administration hoped that the fall of the cruellest regime in a bad neighborhood would inspire reform elsewhere. Has this happened? The short answer is no. America's underlying rationale was that Arab dictatorships fostered dangerous radicalism by denying young Muslims normal outlets for expression. America's blunt intervention added urgency to an already heated local debate on why Arab political systems have, almost universally, failed to generate accountable, clean or competent government. One often noted point is that the sole government in the region to have respected its people's wishes by trying to hinder America's invasion of Iraq was Turkey, which happens, with Israel, to be the region's fullest democracy. At last month's World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan, well-heeled Arab participants roundly dismissed the once-popular notion that economic liberalization is a necessary precursor to political reform. Relief at the fall of Saddam Hussein, and Kuwaitis' positive attitude to the heavy American military presence in the emirate, failed to translate into support for the American agenda of privatization, opening the door to foreign investment, de-Islamised education and women's rights.
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