IronLionZion wrote:nimh wrote:How can one say that "democracy has nothing but a history of failure in the Middle East" when it's hardly been tried?
Is Yemen worse off now that it has free elections than before? Are the limited forms of democracy in Morocco and Egypt more "failed" than the absolute dictatorship in Lybia?
Like you said, all of these governments (Egypt, Yemen, Morocco) are hardly full fledged democracies. Glorified dictatorships would be more accurate.
If they are nothing but glorified dictatorships their failure would be that of dictatorship, not that of democracy. (Can't have it both ways).
There's only more and less democratic countries in the Middle East. No fully fledged democracies, no, but differences in degrees of democracy/dictatorship, yes. The only way to measure whether democracy is doomed to "have nothing but a history of failure" there, is to compare which countries are doing better (or, let's say: worse): the more or the less democratic ones. Would you like to? Mubarak's Egypt or Khadafi's Lybia? Jordan or Syria? Which do you think would Arabs prefer?
IronLionZion wrote:Quote:The Iranians used their opportunity of free elections to vote in a parliament with an overwhelming majority of democratic reformers, eager to free up the strict religious laws of the 1980 revolutions
Don't forget that the rise of the Shah in 1979 was only achieved because a majority of the population favored a Islamic state to a pro-Western dictatorship.
Yes, and now they changed their mind and expressed their change of mind through their vote at the ballot box and public demonstrations. Kinda model behavior, no?
The Serbs once freely voted in Milosevic ... Does that make the Serbs a people for whom democracy won't work? I would say the fact that ten years later, they were on the streets demanding his resignation, and voted to get him out, would prove the opposite. How's Iran different?
IronLionZion wrote:Quote:Asked about a future Iraqi government, 33 pct said they favour an Islamic model, as opposed to 30 pct who said yes to a Western-style democracy.
Marginally more citizens are in favour of an Islamic model than a Western-style democracy. This proves my point, thinks me.
Your point was, "all polls indicate the Iraqis would not opt for a Western style democracy anyway" ...
With 1/3rd for an Islamic state, 1/3rd for Western democracy and 1/3rd, I assume, undecided, I wouldnt say the poll adds much emphasis to your point ... they seem, if anything, fifty-fifty on the matter.
IronLionZion wrote:Remember Algeria in 1992? The USA supported the first free elections in that nation. At least untill it became apparent that the Islamic Fundamentalist FIS was going to win with over 90% of the votes, at which point we reversed our stand, cancelled the elections, and plunged Algeria back into a civil war that continues to this day.
Quite. (Well, not 90% exactly, and the Algerian ancien regime didnt really need the US to cancel its elections for them but - yeh. Basically.) So what would have been your proposed alternative?
IronLionZion wrote:There is a reason why we support so many dictatorships in the Middle East - because we know their democratically elected counterparts would be far less sympathetic to American interests. [..]
Democracy is not the worlds cure all. At some point, Americans are going to have to get over their blind belief in universal American values. There is not an American hiding inside every Arab. Middle Easterners will not jump at the chance to elect an American style government and open a McDonalds on every corner.
I'd make some of the same observations but draw a different conclusion. Namely, that Americans should accept that, though democracy is a pretty commonly held ideal (and the argument that it's 'unnatural' to people x or y usually comes courtesy of people x and y's current dictators), they should realise that democracy in itself won't make other peoples into semi-Americans.
Other peoples, given the chance, will gratefully use democracy to take social, political and economical avenues quite different from America's or what America prefers seeing.
So be it. Let them vote, and go their own way. It won't be much worse than the dictatorships reigning now. Democratisation on the condition that it leads to the end result
we would prefer is no democratisation, and ultimately will merely discredit the notion of democracy, period.
IronLionZion wrote:In other words, in order for democracy to work you must have a certain stability or that democratic power will be used to elect very undemocratic leaders.
It might be me, but I think this bit of logic is biting in its own tail ...
One can't afford to give unstable countries democracy, cause they would use it to elect undemocratic leaders? So who are you keeping in place, instead? ..... Right. <grins>
"You will keep your undemocratic leader, cause if you'd get the right to vote, you'd just vote in an undemocratic leader".
IronLionZion wrote:Peace = democracy, democracy doesn't = peace.
There's been lots of peaceful dictatorships, if by "peace" you mean the absence of war.
