[Tlc] Robert Muscat to Charles Keyes

[justinm at ucr.edu]

Biff:  Nice to hear from you. Good idea since many members may
miss good 
analyses appearing elsewhere.  My own personal interest in
things Thai is 
especially heightened in the case of this coup. The reason is the 
comparison, too far out no doubt, of the Thai experience with
the our sorry 
Iraq experience. Compared with Iraq, Thailand has had
everything going for a 
successul transformation of political culture, from absolute
authoritarian 
to democracy based on rule of law, orderly transfer of power,
and checks and 
balances. Thailand is religiously and culturally relatively
homogeneous, has 
been an independent state for a long time, has had a unifying
monarchy, and 
has (95% of the population) a religion that does not claim
supercession, or 
denigrate, or contain scriptural bases for violent attacks of,
other 
religions. The frictions between its religious sects and
mainstream Buddhism 
are as nothing compared with the Sunni/Shia division.
Nevertheless, 
althought the Thais started down a road toward democracy,
arguably around 70 
years ago, the transformation remains fragile and far from
complete. I have 
used the Thai/Iraq comparison as a perspective that should
have given, and 
should still give, pause to my neocon friends who thought that 
transformation in Iraq would be a shoe-in. This latest coup,
paradoxical and 
quintessentially Thai as it is, has demonstrated my point once
again.
Best regards,
Bob Muscat

______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
2617 Humanities Building
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu