Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Standards of Democracy

Am I the only one questioning neo-con desires to implant democracy in the Middle East? Iran’s President Ahmadinejad was freely elected—no alerts of election fraud that I know of—and he has proceeded on a course that appears to have little to do with Bush/Cheney/Rove desires for stability (and especially U.S. alliance) in that region. WMDs [Weapons of Mass Destruction] have been pretty thoroughly debunked as a legitimate reason to wage war on Iraq, so all that is left is a desire to implant democracy in a volatile region, with a hope that those who freely elect their leaders will choose those who won’t be hostile to the U.S. first, and to Israel secondarily. Iran’s democracy evolved without any U.S. involvement—in fact, probably in spite of the U.S.’s periodic intervention in the region. Will it be a model for other Middle East nations? If it is, what will follow?

1 comment:

Dwight P. said...

You are most certainly not alone. But I wonder whether the democracy in Iran is perhaps the reason that the neo-cons decided to force "American style democracy" on Iraq. If we waited for an insurrection, the result might be real democracy -- something we could never stand for.

Dwight