So now it's occurring to our gummint guyz that Iraq wasn't ready for "full democracy" because it has never had a chance to practice it.
The real question is the one asked at a seminar in Berkeley a couple months ago:
Was Iraq caused by Saddam, or Saddam caused by Iraq?
Josip Broz Tito
became strongman dictator over Yugoslavia, and made it work, by being less doctrinaire and more observant than Stalin.
When he died, and democracy was tried, the nation disintegrated into warring tribes, ethnicities, and religious factions. The conclusion could be advanced that his strong personal style of governance was needed until the polity became familiar with democracy, much like a parent enforces rules until the child can make good decisions on his own, despite internal psychological impulses.
Is that the situation we have in Iraq, with the US military saying today that we might have to settle for a less democratic government in order to get one that works?
Makes sense to me, but it makes me wonder whether we should have worked on making Saddam less brutal, instead of kicking him out, and previously paying for his wars with Iran.
And the same thing might be true in Iran. Democracy seems to require, for instance, church/state separation, such as Turkey is fighting to maintain.
Great foreign policy, guyz! I'm with Obama's observation that "experience in THIS government's foreign policy may not be a good thing."
But I'm voting for Kucinich, because his underlying axioms automatically generate solid foreign policy through respect, cooperation and sharing, rather than competition, greed and empire.