Each Vote Strikes at Terror

[papau]

LIKE WHO IS NOT IN FAVOR OF SPREADING DEMOCRACY?

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-democracy30jan30.story
GLOBAL DEMOCRACY
Each Vote Strikes at Terror
By Walter Russell Mead
Walter Russell Mead, a contributing editor to Opinion and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author, most recently, of "Power, Terror, Peace and War: America's Grand Strategy

January 30, 2005

The teleprompter providing President Bush with his second inaugural address had scarcely gone blank before American and European commentators turned to dismissing his calls for a "war against tyranny" and progress toward universal democracy as naive, dogmatic, overstated and a recipe for chaos in U.S. foreign policy.

The White House sought to meet these objections by pointing out that a statement of values was not a straitjacket and that U.S. foreign policy would promote these values in a nuanced, flexible and strategic way. So the criticism shifted. Bush was no longer a feckless naif: He was an arch-cynical hypocrite. Clearly, this president can't please some of the people any of the time, but beyond Bush's PR problems lie some bigger questions.

Does democracy matter in a war on terrorism? Is democracy gaining or losing ground in the world today? Can it work everywhere, or does it work only in certain cultures and regions? Can U.S. foreign policy make significant contributions to democracy's spread? On the whole, the answers support the idea that, whether or not the Bush administration knows how to do it, the promotion of democracy abroad can be a positive and practical element of U.S. foreign policy.

<snip>


Ending tyranny, Bush said, will be "the concentrated work of generations." It's far from clear that his administration has found the right policy mix to end tyranny in the Muslim Middle East, much less in the rest of the world. But about some of the big things Bush is almost certainly right. The world wants more democracy, and the United States wants a more democratic world. Somehow, that coincidence of interests and values should and will help shape U.S. foreign policy in the turbulent times ahead.

[sui generis]

1. what a crock of horseshit

we did not invade Iraq to spread democracy. Our mission has never ever been to pre-emptively strike to spread democracy.

It burns me up to hear dumbya talking about "fighting for our freedoms" when there isn't a damn thing any Iraqi could or would do to "take away our freedoms".

It is the naive, dogmatic, overstated bait and swith philosophy of a feckless naif: and dumbya and his so-called foreign policy follow the rationale of an arch-cynical hypocrite. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Period.