[Moral Hazard]

I opened Pandora's box last week. Or, rather the guy I was playing in God of War did. Apparently it makes you really big and buff.

[softwarecreator]

So what makes Americans think we can plop down a democracy on the ashes of Saddam's Gulag, or see free elections in a Beirut that was once the Murder, Inc. of the 1970s and 1980s?

And who ever thought Russia would cease to be a communist state and Libya would do an about face and Pakistan would be a good allie of ours.

Going back further (about 50 yrs) who would ever think Germany, Russia and Japan would be friends?

Things take time, it's only been a while in Iraq. Let's see the results in the years to come.

We live in an instant world ... instant food (microwave) instant coffee, instant movies (DVD, video) and instant music. Some things however take years to develop.

The naysayers are just jumping the gun because they can't fathom that they may be wrong on this.

[CruisinAround]

Well, isn't this a classic case of overanalization! (sic, but not really)

It's so easy to look in 20-20 hindsight and come up with a graduate thesis.

Bhutan recently announced that it was becoming democratic in the last couple months for the first time in recorded history. How does that fit into this thesis? It wasn't mentioned. Most people don't know because our MSM won't report good news.

Let me save a lot of graduate students tens of thousands of dollars on education. Democracy works! It doesn't have to be analyzed or studied. It doesn't need to have an American face.

It is the free-will nature of man-kind.

[A. Pole]

There is also a vast body of research, both historical and sociological, that suggests democracy is the aftermath of a long slow evolution toward egalitarianism and economic liberalization. Ancient Greek democracy, for example, was an expansion on earlier consensual government.

It was not a long lasting experiment! In places not ready for this experiment we get things like in Ruanda or Weimar Republic.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

If they elect another whack job we'll just blow it up and rearrange the rubble again.