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

To: jttmab who wrote (187095)	5/23/2006 9:51:56 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

You cannot have any hope to take a people that have lived under decades of brutal suppression and complete corruption will simply flip into a democracy. It's a fantasy. We seem to have made great progress in Japan and Germany. Japan was a Feudalistic society up until the mid-1800s, which then created a parliamentarian system that was usurped by the military in the 1930's. But after WWII, the country was fairly stable and has become of the worlds's strongest democracies. Germany... militarist state, in which the various Germanic states had only actually united together in the 1870s (the "First Reich"). Two World Wars later, they have become FIRMLY democratic. And look at the various "banana republics" of Latin America.. Most were dictatorships less than a few decades agao.. But more and more of them have become democratic (albeit struggling democracies at risk of military coups and autocratic influences). The REAL FANTASY is to believe that a solid, tolerant, and progressive society can form under a totalitarian rule... Let them have a referendum on whether they want the US to leave immediately. I'm not stopping them. As far as I'm concerned, such a referendum could be introduced in the Iraqi legislature at anytime. But they clearly understand that this is not in their political interest. Let the Kurds vote on whether they want their independence. Again.. this is NOT for the US to decide. The Kurds will need to work this out with the current government. But given that they would be landlocked, with no means of accessing markets without transiting potentially hostile neighbors, they also realize that this is not in their interests. If you take out President Kim, do you think the North Koreans will have merely a bumpy ride to democracy? Absolutely not.. Were Kim to fall, then it would require a tremendous amount of foreign economic assistance to tear down the old system and create the framework for a democratic and open society. But I think it would also require a major military peace-keeping presence that would be tasked with countering the same kind of counter-democratic violence being experienced in Iraq. But the process is worth it over the long run. Because the current situation leads us only down a path of increasing risk to regional stability as Kim "ups the anty".. Hawk