Pat Buchanan: Is Democracy on the March -- or Revolution?

[Martin Eden]

It's hard to dispute Pat's logic here:

Is Democracy on the March – or Revolution?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

excerpts:
After 9/11, an impatient George Bush decided to solve his Iraq problem by invading the country and ousting Saddam and the Ba'athists.
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We, too, let a genie out of the bottle. But, whether one opposed this war or believed in it from the start, there is now no going back. The Arab world of 300 million will be changed forever by the U.S. invasion. We have unleashed forces that cannot be contained and we cannot control.
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But when kings, autocrats, or despots are deposed and the people rejoice, it has not always meant democracy is assured. In modern history, people's revolutions have produced tyrannies far more monstrous than the ones they have pulled down.
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In the Arab Middle East, there is no memory of democracy. There is an unbroken history of despotism and domination – by Ottoman Turks, then by Western imperial powers. To understand what kind of nations liberated Middle East peoples will construct, consider the most powerful currents running in the region.

Read more:
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=4732

[ktowntennesseedem]

1. Ominous!!!

Those words are chilling no matter who said them, but even more so considering the source. Don't agree with Pat on anything that I can think of, except for the above.

I plan to read the entire article when I get a few minutes.

[indigobusiness]

2. Buchanan has always been an astute analyst.

It's his opinions that often are rather creepy.

[H2O Man]

4. Very true.

It's actually important to recognize the difference between the obnoxious fellow on tv, and the more thoughtful author of insightful books. Though he has many strongly-held opinions that I'm not comfortable with, I think he is one of the best authors as far as pointing out where this administration has wandered away from democratic practices and indeed the Constitution. For that matter, he does a fair job at showing where democrats and republicans have been united in their doing harm to our nation's foundation.

[ktowntennesseedem]

3. The rest of the article is as good (or chilling) as the excerpts.

nominated for home page!

[pacifictiger]

5. The more I hear of what Pat Buchanan

has been saying over the past year or so, the more surprised I am to realize that much of what he says is sort of in line with the way I've been thinking. Which just goes to show how screwed the country is under this current junta.
Pat Buchanan, an old time conservative, in step with the "libruls" HUH???? We've definitely gone down the rabbit hole, Alice.

[struggle4progress]

6. "In the Arab Middle East, there is no memory of democracy"?

Monday, August 25th, 2003
50 Years After the CIA’s First Overthrow of a Democratically Elected Foreign Government We Take a Look at the 1953 US Backed Coup in Iran
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/25/1534210

[Martin Eden]

7. You've got a point there

Though Buchanan is essentially correct that the "Arab Middle East" lacks sufficient democratic traditions and institutions to constitute the basis of the new regimes that would likely emerge from the overthrow of the current power structures, the region is not without democratic history.

The Iranian government of Mohammed Mossadegh could have been the cornerstone Middle Eastern democracy, but when that government came up against British petrol profits and American cold war fears, we nipped that budding democracy in the bud and installed the repressive regime of the Shah ... which was overthrown 25 years later by a popular revolution led by the mullahs Bush has identified as next in line among the Axis of Evil.

The law of unintended consequences is plainly visible here, but the leaders of our government are blind to the possibility they may be sowing the seeds of even worse consequences with their wars of "preemption." Their prognostications going into Iraq were, in the immortal and ironic words of Paul Wolfowitz, "wildly off the mark."

As it stands now it's looking like we have bankrupted our treasury, sacrificed 1400+ American lives, and incurred the enmity of much of the world in order to install a Shiite regime in Iraq more closely allied with the mullahs of Iran than with us.

What we reap is not always what we think we have sowed.

[KoKo]

9. But, pehaps the "real policy"

was to destabilize and occupy the Middle East. How else could they have gotten so much support for being so clueless. It doesn't make sense that career government insiders would have made such a mess. Especially since Poppy Bush was against "going to Baghdad" in Gulf War I.

And, how were the PNAC'ers allowed to take over Congress with such ill advised plans? Where was Congress? Why? A screw up this massive just had to have some "intention." And the complicity of Tony Blair also points to something else going on here. :shrug:

[Martin Eden]

10. They need a perpetual "war on terror"

The massive screw-up in Iraq and continual violence serves many purposes:

It feeds corporate profits, and provides a rationale for the continued growth of the military/industrial complex;

It drains the federal treasury, thus "starving the beast" of the welfare state;

The threat of terrorism allows them to manipulate the public through fear;

It gives them the trump cards of patriotism and national security, which they play whenever their agenda is challenged;

It helps them hold on to political power;

And they (the neoconservatives) believe it furthers their agenda for a Pax Americana.

This is where I think the law of unintended consequences comes into play, because I think they are delusional in their belief that all of this will serve the long term interests of the United States or even the corporate fat cats who will get richer in the short term.

This level of unbridled militarism is simply unsustainable, both economically and in terms of the rest of the world not taking counter measures.

I think Blair is simply gambling by hitching the British dinghy to the American ship of state, perhaps not realizing that this U.S. administration is of a different nature than the stable dependable ally the Brits are used to.

[EST]

8. Buchannon is mistaken.

But only in the number of violent people now arrayed against us!

Edited for: finger lisp