Rick
Reader comment on item: Bush's Middle East Hopes
in response to reader comment: A "democracy" is only as good or as bad as the people

Submitted by Trans-parere (Canada), Jan 21, 2008 at 18:29

Israel shares a ruling population exception similar to the Arab States in that Israel is ruled by those of the Jewish faith and Arabs by Islam. The key difference as I see it is that Israel and her Jewish population have immigrated from many different world regions with many different world experiences that enrich it as a nation. The many national experiences brought by those returning to Israel gave her a diversity one can witness in it's system of governance and political party's. Comparatively, the Arab States are for the most part, singularly "Arab" authoritarian principalities.

We dropped the ball where Iran and Lebanon are concerned, and I think we may have dropped the ball were the Kurds are concerned by not creating an independent and democratic Kurdish State when we had the chance in early days during the advance on Baghdad. As you say, "democracy is only as good as the people", and I don't think we in the west, the purveyors of democracy, have been selling the product at home and abroad with any great consistency.

As it stands now I am concerned for the direction/consistency needed in Iraq and Afghanistan post GWB. We could drop the ball here with a liberalism equal to that which compelled America to fight as it did in Viet-Nam and to find an equally easy face saving way out. Failure here could force the worlds leading democracies to withdraw to an isolationist posture that could prove the making of a WW3 later down the road. No less than in any other time, we today need good, strong leaders who hold an inclusive world view. And we need a politically active, educated populace to ensure that's what we get. For the whole world, in the final analysis, it all comes down to ... We the people.

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