The Ming Report

FIGHTING FOR DEMOCRACY?

February 15, 2006 - Somewhere there is a line dividing those regimes with democratic governments and those regimes maintaining undemocratic governments. In our own hemisphere of course Cuba lies on the far side of the line joined by Venezuela and more recently Bolivia. Haiti just had an election. We don’t yet know who won so we don’t know whether to list it as a democracy or not. For years now we have listed Syria as beyond the line because their politics and elections have been wholly dominated by the Baathist party. When Fatah dominated elections in Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank we saw them as an emerging democracy. With the recent electoral victory notched by Hamas the Palestinian Authority stepped back over the line to undemocratic.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin seems to be transformed from democrat to autocrat depending on whether he agrees with Washington this week. England is dependably democratic. Sometimes we have doubts about Germany. France is, well, France so what can you expect. Iran holds elections and lays a veneer of democracy over and essential theocracy but who among us would declare Iran a democracy? Especially as she insists upon a sovereign right to acquire the second Islamic a-bomb.

Then there is Pakistan. It is clearly on our side of the line. The possessor of Islam’s only nuclear weapon, at least the only one we know about for sure, Pakistan is headed by a General who over threw the country’s last elected regime. He recently announced that he might allow elections soon. Egypt too is on our side of the line. Egypt holds elections regularly and just last year permitted opposition candidates. Too many of the opposition won so Egypt’s President announced next years elections would be delayed by two years.

Consider Libya. It used to be headed by a ruthless dictator. President Reagan sent our planes to bomb his tents. Then he grandly gave up his nuclear ambitions, let American companies back into his oil fields and we don’t hear much about him anymore. Is he now a newly minted democrat?

America’s young men and women are in harm’s way in Iraq and in Afghanistan. They are being killed in ones and twos and grievously wounded in tens and twenties. We are told that they are fighting for democracy; to create a stable democratic government as a model for the Middle East. American men and women are dying so that others may taste the fruit of the tree of liberty. It is a high minded slogan that borrows from our national heritage but I am not sure that the words used by our current government officials carry the same meaning attached to those same words two hundred thirty years ago.

All of this begs the question: Are Americans dying because they are fighting for democracy and if they are what brand of democracy is it for which they fight?