Posted on 01/27/2005 4:42:55 AM PST by Tolik
Fostering elections in Iraq is a hard road, well apart from the daily violence of the Sunni Triangle. The autocratic Sunni elite of surrounding countries prefers democracy to fail, warning us that an Iranian-sponsored theocracy will surely follow in Iraq, legitimizing a new Arab Khomeinism.
Sunni Iraqis want exemption from, or a delay of, the election -- even though they cannot or will not stop their own violence that imperils it. The United States earns very little credit abroad for its newfound dedication to democratic reform -- even as realists at home warn that we should instead back the status-quo who better guarantee order that purportedly favors our own national security.
There are rarely supporters of the hard road of promoting democracies abroad until they are well established. We learned that well enough both before and after the Afghanistan war. Many swore that the Taliban could not be removed. After their demise, new critics warned that the fascists could not be replaced with democrats -- and now suddenly they are mostly silent or indeed supportive of the new Afghanistan.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Let me know if you want in or out
The war-torn Europeans understandably bristle at the option of using force for democratic change, but if Nicaraguans, Panamanians, Bosnians, Kosovars, Afghans and Iraqis had counted only on the EU's much vaunted utopian soft power, then they would be still under dictators. If in World War II Americans had acted as the present-day European Union does now, there would probably be no European Union today.
...The world after September 11 has reminded us of three other lessons as well. Democracies rarely attack each other and thus the greater the number of them, the less likely is war itself. Citizens vent better through ballots than bullets. And freedom is innate to all born into this world rather than the sole domain of the West.
If the past is any guide to the future, that hard road to democracy in the Middle East will create as much immediate chaos and caricature of President Bush's new idealism as it does enduring stability and eventual praise — but only long after he is gone.
Nicely said Victor, as usual.
VDH bump.
Mornin'. Thanks.
Thanks for the ping.
The war-torn Europeans understandably bristle at the option of using force for democratic change, but if Nicaraguans, Panamanians, Bosnians, Kosovars, Afghans and Iraqis had counted only on the EU's much vaunted utopian soft power, then they would be still under dictators. If in World War II Americans had acted as the present-day European Union does now, there would probably be no European Union today.
Sure there would, of course it would be headquartered in Berlin.
Or Moscow.
bttt
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