Jonathan Schell: The matter is not in our hands. It never was. “These plans to mass-produce democracies and transform the mentalities of whole peoples have the look of desperate attempts– as grandiose as they are unhinged from reality – to overlook the obvious: First, that people, not excluding Iraqis, do not like to be conquered and occupied by foreign powers and are ready and able to resist; second, that disarmament, which is indeed an essential goal for the new century, can only, except in the rarest of circumstances, be achieved not through war but through the common voluntary will of nations. It is not the character of the occupation, it is occupation itself that the Iraqis are, in a multitude of ways, rejecting.” AlterNet