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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (166426)	7/20/2005 9:33:02 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

I was thinking more in terms of Ghandi, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, etc. Ghandi is a great example. To the best of my knowledge Ghandi was never armed by foreign countries to overthrow Britain. An exceptional case. And his timing was great. 1947. Britain was recovering from WWII, paying it's debts to the US and contributing to the Marshall Plan. They couldn't afford to fight in India. Lincoln. I don't think that Lincoln is an example of someone that rose to power in a time of turmoil. He was in power before that and pretty much created the turmoil. He took the country to civil war by not allowing the freedom loving people of the south to have their independence. Presumably, you've lumped Washington and Jefferson under the turmoil of the American Revolution. Prior to the revolution the colonies were pretty much independent of Britain. The "abuses" by Britain were minor; I think there's a pretty good argument that our county governments today are significantly more abusive than the British were. Look up the Quebec Act [one of the five Intolerable Acts]. Figure out what was "intolerable". In reality, the colonists wanted to preserve their right to be abusive. I'm not into list making. However, I do find your logic a bit skewed. Good men do stand up in periods of social strife, Corrupt opportunists are also known to exploit these situations. The point is: Which happens more often? In the overwhelming number of cases, where there is substantial and long term conflict the ones that rise to power are nearly as bad as the ones that are overthrown. Look at Russia as an example of transitional democracy. That should be one of the smoother transitions. 20 years later, they're still struggling with democracy. And probably will be for quite some time. In Iraq, there's an entire generation that has known nothing but oppression and corruption. That is "normal" for Iraq. It's going to be decades before Iraq becomes a true democracy. That's long enough to suggest that you won't know whether the war in Iraq hastened the transition or delayed it. jttmab