Article

2006-11-02 Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Khatami: West can't impose democracy on Mideast

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Fred 2006-11-02 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11132 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Khatami: West can't impose democracy on Mideast

Maybe we can pacify the Islamic world by imposing Western-style democratic governance along with its notions of individual rights and individual responsibility, maybe we can't. We'll see.

We did it with Germany and Japan, and it certainly has done the job for the last 60 years: neither of those countries has shown even the aggressive impulses of the average garden vegetable in all that time.

Maybe the reason it worked so well with Germany and Japan, and hasn't worked well at all with the Islamic world so far, is that in WWII we pounded the absolute living CRAP out of those two countries; we beat them, literally, to near death.

Maybe that's the missing ingredient.

Posted by Dave D.">Dave D. 2006-11-02 06:52|| 2006-11-02 06:52|| Front Page Top

#2 we pounded the absolute living CRAP out of those two countries; we beat them, literally, to near death.

Maybe that's the missing ingredient.

Yup. But I fear it's another decade or so before we have the necessary domestic consensus to do it.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-11-02 07:00|| 2006-11-02 07:00|| Front Page Top

#3 And the price we'll have to pay for reaching that domestic consensus, thanks to the anti-war Left, will probably be smoking holes in the ground where a couple of our cities used to be.

Posted by Dave D.">Dave D. 2006-11-02 07:06|| 2006-11-02 07:06|| Front Page Top

#4 True, we can't impose democracy, but we can bounce the rubble.

Posted by SR-71 2006-11-02 08:33|| 2006-11-02 08:33|| Front Page Top

#5 Time is running out for the cultural marxists in our domestic left.

Posted by SR-71 2006-11-02 08:35|| 2006-11-02 08:35|| Front Page Top

#6 But we can impose desolation and call it democracy. The current methods won't work, just as democracy in Japan or Germany could not have worked if Nazism and Emperor god/Bushido were enshrined as the basis of all law. Instead it took the deaths and conversion of the Nazis and Virtue of the Sword acolytes. Imperialistic islam is no different and in many ways worse.

Posted by ed 2006-11-02 08:36|| 2006-11-02 08:36|| Front Page Top

#7 Khatami: West can't impose democracy on Mideast

Oh, the horror!

Posted by gorb 2006-11-02 12:29|| 2006-11-02 12:29|| Front Page Top

#8 If Mr. Khatami is right, and that is what the current experiments in Iraq and Afghanistan are testing, then we will be forced to move to the alternative of total war. Their choice.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-11-02 13:46|| 2006-11-02 13:46|| Front Page Top

#9 Khatami: West can't impose democracy on Mideast

While we may not be able to "impose" democracy upon the Middle East, what we can do is make every alternative to it so uninviting whereby the sole choice that doesn't involve trmendous loss of life, military domination or nuclear annihilation just happens to be democracy.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2006-11-02 14:31|| 2006-11-02 14:31|| Front Page Top

#10 We can impose democracy in one of three ways: (1) Provide security and the help the middle east set up democracy as we are doing now (Afghanistan) (2) Allow "our" dictators to pacify their nations and then push them towards democracy (South Korea, Latin America, Greece, Italy). (3) Smash the countries and rebuild them with a democratic structure (examples are Germany and Japan)

I think we give (1) a try, if that fails we step back and give (2) a try. Then option (3) awaits. I expect increasing brutality as we shift down the scale.

Posted by rjschwarz 2006-11-02 15:30|| 2006-11-02 15:30|| Front Page Top

#11 "Of course, we had to kill quite a few of them to do it"

Yah well it helped that between the two of them, theyd gone to war with Britain and its dominions, Russia, China, almost of Europe, etc before we even got involved.

Iran, Syria, etc cant, and wont do us that favor. (Plenty of the others are even trying to stay "allies") So wed better be a bit more creative, and not just long for the glory days of 1946.

Posted by liberalhawk 2006-11-02 16:06|| 2006-11-02 16:06|| Front Page Top

#12 We have a choice, Khatami. We can either get people to learn to govern themselves, allow individual freedoms, and encourage personal responsibility, or we can destroy the Middle East, from Pakistan to Morocco. Now, what was that you said again?

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2006-11-02 19:06|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2006-11-02 19:06|| Front Page Top

#13 If Mr. Khatami is right, and that is what the current experiments in Iraq and Afghanistan are testing, then we will be forced to move to the alternative of total war.

Methinks that is what he and his ilk are counting on.

Posted by Pappy 2006-11-02 21:34|| 2006-11-02 21:34|| Front Page Top

#14 Methinks that is what he and his ilk are counting on.

These assholes need a taste of total war, American style. They'll regret that they were ever even born.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2006-11-02 23:38|| 2006-11-02 23:38|| Front Page Top

19:47 Speng Thater
15:37 Speng Thater7808
18:12 Speng Thater
18:39 Jon Carry
18:35 Jon Carry
18:23 John Fn Kerry
23:59 Zenster
23:56 Leigh
23:49 Zenster
23:38 Zenster
23:27 Jan
23:16 Anonymoose
23:11 Zenster
23:09 Mick Dundee
23:06 Annoying Australian Guy
23:00 Jesing Ebbease3087
22:59 mcsegeek1
22:57 mcsegeek1
22:49 mcsegeek1
22:46 mcsegeek1
22:42 Abdominal Snowman
22:26 Alaska Paul
22:26 Deacon Blues
22:19 xbalanke