18 days
0 RPGs
0 IEDs
0 Drones
0 Tanks
0 Patriot missiles
0 Guns
And a democracy was born.
Were you paying attention, Bill Kristol? How about you, Dick Cheney? Hello, Wolfowitz? Does anyone believe that any of the signatories to the mission statement for PNAC (project for the new American century) aka the neocons paid any attention to what happened in Egypt today?
I hope so, but I doubt it. We watched a democracy develop over the course of two and a half weeks, in a place that hasn’t seen democracy in over thirty years! This was amazing, and I’m overjoyed to have been around to watch it happen.
This one happened without an armed opposition. Democracies aren’t always born peacefully, but they’re always born when the people are ready to fight for it.
Democracy isn’t something that can be foisted on people. It’s something that they must seek out and fight for when they’re ready for it. It’s earned, it’s not imposed. No amount of weapons can make democracy happen where it’s not ready to.
We have now reached the $750,000,000,000 mark in Iraq. How’s that democracy working out over there? We’re about to “celebrate” the eighth anniversary of the beginning of that war.
Eight fucking years, and 3/4 of a trillion dollars! Compare that to 18 days and $0. And who got the better result? Who got the job done in a more dignified way? Did you notice that we didn’t see see Hosni Mubarak’s sons’ dead bodies displayed, in a show of testosterone? Did you notice that there were no cell phone videos of Mubarak being barbarically hanged? Did you notice the dignity with which this all happened?
Yeah, democracy only works when people want it. You can’t shove it down peoples’ throats when they’re not prepared for it. I’ve said this before in other posts, but it bears repeating; I believe that people are the same all over the world. We all fundamentally want the same things. We want to live freely and comfortably. We want the opportunity to be able to feed our families and live in peace. I believe that there isn’t a country in the world that won’t eventually move toward democracy. But they have to move in that direction in their own time, unmolested by outside forces.
This notion that we can “spread” democracy is asinine! Democracy is a system of governance, not an STD.
When people want it, they always get it. We just need to learn to stay the fuck out of the way and let it happen naturally. We need to refocus our resources here, on our own citizens and trust that everyone will come around to our way of life because we’ve demonstrated it’s better.
