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Originally posted by scooobiedooobie
we are not forcing democracy in the middle east. we are helping to instill it. democracy can't be imposed by force, but force can liberate people from tyrants who rule by force and threaten others. how about post-ww II germany and japan? we did not force democracy, we helped to instill it. was that “impossible” or a “fantasy”, as you put it. both countries were previously run by dictators. neither had a compelling history of democratic government.
the results were very good for the german and japanese people and for the world. the use of american military power was a necessary prerequisite. the people of iraq are like people everywhere. they love and deserve freedom and would prefer to rule themselves if given half a chance. american power can and will play an essential role in giving them that chance.
as president bush said, “the islamic terrorists view the rise of democracy in iraq as a powerful threat to their ambitions”. it will get worse if the coalition just pulls out, and that would be a moral and practical victory for islamic terrorists. if we left today, right now, without setting up some system of stability, we would have a repeat of history and a new saddam would emerge.
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nice try, Scoob, but it's a false analagy - comparing Japanese and/or German cultures (never mind the historical context, which are also not comparable) to an Arab culture is apples and oranges. the Arab cultures are tribal in nature, rife with severe ethnic and religious stratifications. Islam, which, by definition, represses women and chokes free speech, is simply not compatible with democracy. (22 nations in the Arab league and not one is a democracy - is that a clue?).
what you and the administration don't seem to grasp is that, for whatever reasons, unlike the Germans and Japanese, the Arab nations are decades behind the rest of the world in human development. democracy works nowhere in the Middle East and there is absolutely no comparable historical precedent to suggest it will succeed in Iraq. (see the
2003 Arab Human Development Report )
so, ask yourself, how many Americans should get killed trying? how many billions of dollars of tax payers money is worth the effort? the administration was either shockingly ignorant or downright duplicitous of the long term cost of war in Iraq, but in the end, it doesn't matter which. as a nation, we've been sucked into a fool's errand by our leaders and we'll be paying for it long after they're gone.