Who Does This Sound Like?

From "The Master Plan" by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker:

"After coalition forces overran Al Qaeda compounds in Afghanistan in late 2001, they seized thousands of pages of internal memoranda. . . . [Only one] briefly addresses whether jihadis are prepared to run a state should they succeed in toppling one. . . . Beyond the simplistic notion of imposing a caliphate and establishing the rule of Islamic law, the leaders of the organization appear never to have thought about the most basic facts of government. What kind of economic model would they follow? How would they cope with unemployment, so rampant in the Muslim world? . . . . The truth. . . is that the radical Islamists have no interest in government; they are interested only in jihad."

Hmm, this sounds vaguely familiar. Oh, of course, Bush & Co. and Iraq. The one difference is they had -- or thought they had -- an answer to "What kind of economic model would they follow?" But, grafting "free markets" onto the economy, like democracy onto the government, didn't take. Still, guess great minds think alike.

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