...Or would you rather wait until it's "outside your front door?"

Ramblings' Journal / Project 21 ^ | 5.11.04 | Michael King

[some guy in the mountains]

Is that what you're concerned about?

The level of sovereignty that the Iraqi interim government will have?

The July turnover is just another step on the long road to representative government for them

Right, it's not sovereignty. Anyone who describes what will happen on June 30th as returning sovereignty to the Iraqi's is deliberately trying to misinform, or they are misinformed themselves.

[backtothestreets]

Your statement "Our democracy works because, first and foremost, we self-govern, a product of our Judeo-Christian heritage.", holds much truth, but I'd say first and foremost our democracy works because democracy was sought.

Unfortunate comparisons have been made between the liberation of European countries from WWII German occupation forces and the current "liberation" of Iraq. The liberation of European countries restored self-government to peoples that had it prior to German occupation. They knew, and loved what was being restored. Once liberated, these people joined in every aspect of our efforts to defeat the enemy. We no longer had to seek German collaborators. The people we liberated surrendered them to us.

The same cannot be said of Iraq. Efforts to defeat the enemy are absent the general population. Even the efforts of Iraqi police and defense forces might be absent if not for the financial gain offered by our government.

The Iraqis have never known democracy, never sought democracy, and may not be inclined toward democracy. The desire to self govern must come from within the leaders of a nation. In Islamic countries will only be achieved by way of leading clerics giving their blessings to such a concept. The clerics are comparable in stature to the Emperor of Japan, the religious figurehead of the Japanese Empire. When Hirohito subjugated himself to our insistence for a democratic post war Japan, the Japanese population followed without resistance.

Without such backing from Islamic clerics, the religious figureheads of Iraq, our efforts to instill democratic values upon the Iraqi population are destined to fail.