On May 11, 2005, at 2:06 PM, Dan Minette wrote:
From: "Warren Ockrassa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On May 11, 2005, at 10:15 AM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote:
I just wonder what can be done to solve the plight of those millions of human beings
Nothing.
[...]
But, it has worked a number of times, as well as not having worked a number
of times.
Has it? Apart from Germany and Japan post WWII, when in the history of the US have we been successful in installing a democratic model of government in any nation? (I'm really asking; I might well have forgotten some things!)
Western Europe and Japan are classic examples of this.
Japan was beaten. Much of Western Europe was already skewing democratic pre WWII. And we had the backing of the rest of the allied forces in both cases (post-Nazi Germany, post-imperial Japan) to help us.
Times were probably a bit simpler as well. There were no pro-Nazi or pro-Hirohito terrorist training camps; the context and the nature of the enemy have both changed considerably in the last six decades.
On the
whole, if you look at the amount of influence/leverage the US has had with
a country, there is a strong correlation between that influence and
representative governments.
Influence is a far cry from direct frontal assault. And it is not our responsibility to "fix" the world, particularly as there are still many parts of it that don't *want* our kind of fixing in the first place.
Leaving aside that it's literally practically impossible to change the world, what right have we to force a democratic, nominally atheistic government on, say, Saudi Arabia, which is a theocracy (essentially) steeped in Islamic literalism? Would it be any different from, for instance, forcing the Amish to accept the Internet? (On an ethical level, I mean.)
Freedom, famously, is not free; but when it's forced on someone else, it is not freedom.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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