And yet they continue to pretend.
"Democracy - it’s not for everyone" by H.D.S. Greenway | November 17, 2009
How has democracy fared in the decades since? It has thrived in Eastern Europe since the end of Soviet empire 20 years ago. It has served India well and Pakistan badly. In much of Africa democracy has provided a shell under which gangsters plunder and beggar their people.
Recently, a stolen election in Afghanistan has been a disaster for American hopes and policy. There will soon be another election in Iraq that will do little to heal that bitterly divided country.
An American-backed election brought Hamas to power in Gaza in 2006. But instead of honoring the voice of the people, Israel, with American connivance, simply locked the territory down, turning Gaza into a virtual prison in one of the most notable cases of collective punishment on the face of the globe.
So HE KNOWS the SIEGE is a WAR CRIME!!
When Islamic parties won an election in Algeria in 1991, the West encouraged the reversal of election results, suggesting an hypocrisy that says democracy is only permissible when the results are favorable to us....
And that is NOT DEMOCRACY, is it?
George W. Bush and his neo-conservatives put a great deal of store in the transformational power of democracy. Overthrowing Saddam Hussein in Iraq, many naively believed, would transform the Middle East from the authoritarian rule of sheiks and emirs to a Western democracy that would be friendly to Israel.... there seems little chance that Iraq will be opening an embassy in Tel Aviv any time soon.
Good.
No one should be opening relations with that war-criminal stain. They should be cutting them off.
Perhaps the best to be hoped for Iraq is that it emerges into something like Lebanon, a troubled land at best, riven with factions and prone to undue influence from other countries.
Oh, yaaaaay, Bush's liberation!
They were BETTER OFF BEFORE!!!!
*********************************************
It would be hard to argue now that a traditional loya jirga, in which Afghan tribal elders get together to decide who rules, wouldn’t have been better than insisting on a Western-style election in Afghanistan....
Well, it's a LITTLE LATE NOW, huh?
--more--"
