From: Ascmjk@aol.com
Date: Mon May 17 2004 - 17:19:36 BST
In a message dated 5/15/2004 9:32:57 PM Central Standard Time,
DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org writes:
George Bush frames his foreign policies in religious terms and
openly asserts that the USA has God on its side, but the neo-conservatives
who have written about and planned for the democratization of the
Islamic-Arab world don't put it in those terms. In fact, the original
architect, Jean Kirkpatrick, openly espoused an unprincipled stance toward
democracy and human rights. We'll use the principles of freedom to sieze the
moral high ground when deal with thugs and tyrants tht we DON'T like, she
said, and we'll just keep quite about the same violations when they're
committed by thugs and tyrants that we DO like. That's a long way from
saying that freedom is a gift from God given to all humanity, as Bush has
said. And yet, both of them just sort of assume that the world should be
shaped and led by the USA.
And even I have to confess that it does seem like the world's best shot at
global democracy. Not while these reactionary fools are at the healm, but in
the long run, the West, if not the USA alone, will have to take the lead
Jon says:
David, I think even you would agree the UN is not even committed to any kind
of vision of global democracy. As far as Iraq is concerned, I would remind
people of the nightmare of Reconstruction after the American Civil War. It was a
long, sometimes nightmarish process in which the liberators (US soldiers) and
those liberated (slaves) both suffered. Had the North cut and run, however,
the victory achieved in 1865 would have been meaningless. The fact is President
Andrew Johnson tried to give the South back to the Southerners TOO SOON (minus
slavery), and the ensuing rivalry resulted in Northern troops having to
return for a few years. The North had won. The South was defeated militarily, but
many Southerners didn't want their way of life changed by those from the North.
Eventually, the South had to accept new ways of life, and I believe the
people of the middle east, starting with Iraq, will gradually accept democracy, and
future generations will reject tyranny the way future generations of Southern
whites eventually rejected the concept of racism. The differences between
Iraqi Freedom and the American Civil War are obvious, of course, but the
similarities are there too. The key is to focus on the intellectual concepts. Yes,
hatred of the North persisted in the South many years after the civil war and
pockets of racism exists today, but you can see where I'm going with the analogy,
which I believe is a compelling one. Pockets of US hatred will persist for
decades, but acceptance and harmony will spread as democracy itself has spread
at an unprecedented rate since the mid-1970's (when there were only about 40
democracies in the world; now there's over 120 I believe)
Jon
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