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Sat 20 Jun, 2015 10:01 am
Does "that were democracy to suddenly come to these countries" mean "supposed that democracy would suddenly come to these countries"?
Context:
Our failure to support the Shiite uprising in southern Iraq in 1991, which we encouraged, surely ranks among the most unethical and consequential foreign policy blunders of recent decades. But our culpability on this front must be bracketed by the understanding that were democracy to suddenly come to these countries, it would be little more than a gangplank to theocracy. There does not seem to be anything within the principles of Islam by which to resist the slide into sharia (Islamic law), while there is everything to encourage it. This is a terrible truth that we have to face: the only thing that currently stands between us and the roiling ocean of Muslim unreason is a wall of tyranny and human rights abuses that we have helped to erect. This situation must be remedied, but we cannot merely force
Muslim dictators from power and open the polls. It would be like
opening the polls to the Christians of the fourteenth century.
@oristarA,
Yes.
= ...if democracy were suddenly to come to these countries....
@McTag,
McTag wrote:
Yes.
= ...if democracy were suddenly to come to these countries....
Cool. Thanks.
"it would be little more than a gangplank to theocracy" refers to"it would merely serve as a gangplank by which the democracy will still jump to theocracy"?
@oristarA,
Yes, but no jump is required. A gangplank, or a gangway, is a path or bridge from one thing to another, typically from a boat to a jetty.
@McTag,
McTag wrote:
Yes, but no jump is required. A gangplank, or a gangway, is a path or bridge from one thing to another, typically from a boat to a jetty.
Gangway - a new word to me. It is crystal clear now.
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