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Drifting Away From Democracy

“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity. “Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,” the expert said, “but you can sense […]

“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.

“Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,” the expert said, “but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.” ~The New York Times

Nothing wrong with thinking about alternatives.  But if we are considering alternatives (perhaps one of those terrible stability-inducing dictators who, I don’t know, actually succeeds in providing security to his countrymen?), why do we still go through the song and dance of talking up the “freedom agenda”?  Why does Mr. Bush continue to insult our intelligence with this stuff?  No one out here in the country with much sense takes it seriously anyway, and it forces Mr. Bush into all sorts of awkward positions (like, say, declaring his support for the democratic government of a country that his ally is bombing to smithereens).  But the real problem is that all of this democracy nonsense has actually taken priority over the real work at hand, as if it was a cure-all that would eliminate all the other problems if we just had enough elections.  (Defenders of the war will harumph and say that they know democracy means more than having elections–they’re not a bunch of stupid hippies, after all!–but they then get very silent when asked to provide evidence that those other things necessary to a successful, lawful representative system of constitutional government are actually present in Iraq.) 

The first responsibility–indeed, really the only obligation of an occupier–is to provide order and security for the people under his supervision.  In chasing after the will o’ the wisp that is Iraqi democracy, we have managed to organise several elections while failing to provide even minimal levels of security in the capital city.  Had Saigon been this anarchic by 1968, public opinion about the war back then might have been about as low as it is in the current war.  Under the circumstances, I would be looking for “alternatives,” too.

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