When they speak about making democracies in the middle east, since Iraq may be doing fine now.....it does not matter which party says it. It is still called
empire.
And it is still wrong, and we have no right to spread democracy in the middle east.
Idea of the Week: Middle Eastern DemocracyWe may not know for weeks exactly what kind of government yesterday's Iraqi elections produced, but the fact that they were successfully held, with relatively little violence, and with an extraordinary turnout among Arab Sunnis as well as Kurds and Shi'a, is unmistakably good news.
Moreover, these elections were in themselves an historic breakthrough for the Arab Middle East. Iraq has just become the world's first genuine Arab democracy -- perhaps not a full-fledged American-style democracy, but a democracy nonetheless in the basic sense of a nation governed by a popularly elected government representing every element of its society. If this government, and the process which created it, endure, it could become the catalyst for the political, economic and social transformation of the Greater Middle East that provides the best way, and perhaps the only way, to diminish the appeal of jihadist terrorism.
But even in the short term, these elections could make the road ahead in Iraq much clearer and straighter. The United States can now end its major military involvement in Iraq the right way, through negotiations with an Iraqi government whose legitimacy can no longer be questioned, instead of through arguments between politicians in Washington. That is why the elections clearly represented an important, if hardly a final, benchmark toward what all Americans want: an expedited withdrawal from Iraq on terms that do not produce a calamity for Iraqis or a national security setback for ourselves.
To be sure, this is only the first step along that path.
The article points out that democracy is our strongest weapon in the war of ideas against Islamist extremism. I disagree with that. These nations do not want us to "democratize" them anymore. Just don't force our cultures and our so-called democratic ways on them. This ending paragraph or two makes me nervous....like some Democrats are far too wiling to spread Democracy where it is not wanted.
By this we don't mean democracy as a magic elixir, as Bush administration officials sometimes seem to describe it, but democracy as a process whereby people wounded and fearful after decades of tyranny learn to negotiate, compromise, build up institutions of civil society, and forge a national identity based on mutual respect and free consent rather than brutal coercion.
And if that can happen in Iraq, it can happen throughout the Middle East -- in Palestine, in Egypt, and even in Saudi Arabia.
In the end, that's the just and worthy cause we are fighting for in Iraq -- the cause our troops have suffered and died for -- and we urge Democrats in particular to look beyond our justifiable anger at the administration's many blunders and its stubborn refusal to admit them, and embrace that cause as our own.
I thought we were fighting in Iraq because of an immediate danger there. I don't like our Democrats helping Bush on his evolving reasons for all the deaths and dying.