The US, UN & Iraq II

You Americans are very quiet about Israel's blatant breaches of United Nations reolutions.....maybe Timberlandko, you would be man enough to address this issue

The third possibility is what the adventurers who now run American foreign and defense policy seek: we take Baghdad, liberate Iraq and turn it into a modern, peaceful democracy. The probability of this happening makes a snowball's chances in Hell look pretty good, but even if it does, it too is a long-term disaster. Why? First, because democracy in the Islamic world probably means the election of people like Bin Laden, whose campaign slogan would be, "Death to the Christian and Jewish dogs!" Second, because what the American Establishment means by "freedom and democracy" is Brave New World. And third, because the adventurers, emboldened by success, might then go on to wage war against Iran, Syria, Libya, and possibly North Korea. If their goal is American world hegemony, that goal is certain to drive everyone else into a coalition against us, state and non-state elements alike.

That "democracy" can be inimical to liberty is hardly a novel thought; it has led many to prefer rule by an uncorrupted civic elite over demagogic manipulation of volatile, uninformed multitudes. The imperfections of modern democracy are troublingly obvious, and Zakaria summarizes them well. States, in his view, don't need to be made more democratic, they need to be sheltered from the perverse pressures generated by unconstrained mass rule. Most democratic theorists would respond that competent administrative elites cannot be conjured up at will; and while minority rights clauses and other constraints are important, it is only the ballot box that can confer public legitimacy. It may be, as Zakaria suggests, that we set too much store by elections and their outcomes. But they are all we have....
Self-generating liberal democracies are historically unusual, even in the West. Like capitalism, they require, in order to succeed, indigenous antecedent qualities that cannot be retroactively supplied. Democratic institutions grafted from abroad onto culturally distinctive and impoverished nations have a mixed track record. America's rediscovered mission, to make the world "safe for democracy," thus risks proving self-defeating, even in its more plausible guise as a mis-sion to make the world safe for Americans. And in the absence of any accompanying ambition to make the rest of the world richer, safer, healthier, or better educated, this mission stands a good chance of constructing and defending some quite unwholesome "democracies."

But, as Fareed Zakaria argues in a new book, the protean qualities of democracy can be misleading.[10] In much of the world, democracy is often the direct heir to authoritarian dictatorship and a substitute for good government. We are all familiar with the late, unlamented "people's democracies," but even in more genuine democracies the spurious legitimacy of public elections frequently obscures infirm and corrupt institutions. The source of Western success and the basis for both free markets and international peace, Zakaria suggests, had been the distinctive tradition of representative government, protected civil freedoms, and public law that originated in northwest Europe (specifically Britain), before migrating across the Atlantic. Democratic voting rights and free elections flow from these blessings; they do not necessarily bring them in their wake. "The 'Western model of government' is best symbolized not by the mass plebiscite but the impartial judge."