The transition from dictatorship to democracy is unpredictable, often violent, and frequently leads to results other than those originally sought.
Given that we're descended, genetically, from people who practiced democracy in some form or other for hundreds of years, and philosophically from people who practiced democracy in some form or other for a few thousand years -- it's hard to imagine doing it for the first time.
Nevertheless, it's worth doing. And Iraqis who moved to the United States seem to have no problem getting the hang of it, so it can't be that hard.
No, it's not the democracy, per se, that's the hard part. It's the results that are unimaginable.
Reactionism is historically common, see, e.g., Know-Nothingism in the US, fascism in Italy and Germany, and various authoritarian governments in Africa and Latin America. Sad, but true.
So my point was that I have no expectations. I just think that what they had was worse, and to the extent that it's our fault, we should fix it. If we can. |
