Apparently, I do disagree. But the prelude of this discussion is an understanding that this is totally off point from my original posts, and is an entirely separate discussion altogether.
No, I do not believe the Iraqi people are deserving or ready for democracy to be their governing paradigm. That "unalienable rights" bit? Yeah- Jefferson stole that from Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. These two borrowed their ideas to British Reformation activists who, with French and Spanish reformers, borrowed their ideas and notions of democratic reform from someone else. Keep going until you hit Greece, the cradle of democracy. Notice thaat, through this process, you skip all over the western world and avoid the Middle East completely. There is a reason for that.
What did Havel say when Communism died at the end of the 1980s and started turning democratic? Something like, "Democratic values slumbered in the subconscious of our nations".
It doesn't slumber in the minds of the Muslim world. To be sure, forming a stable and real democratic Iraq is in our best interest, and the best hope for the people of Iraq to manage their own affairs peacefully, but it does not suit them, at least not yet. How many European countries did we deliver from Fascism and into democracy after World War II? Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain. Why doesn't it work in the Middle East?
Look at the only genuine democracy in the Muslim world, Turkey. It's hardly a true democracy. Denial of human and cultural rights exists, as well as infractions on personal freedoms, something apartheid didn't even mandate, including which names people can choose for their children, and what they can say in public or private.
I could say that Iraq needs their own civil war/unrest, with their own democratic process coming around, much like Indonesia did, but this scenario is unrealistic: Iraqi turmoil affects our oil and interests as well as a host of other industrialized states, and so letting their own "duke it out" is unlikely to happen.
The weakness of civil society in Muslim countries is not just from harsh regimes. It’s cultural, Intellectual, and religious. In many Muslim countries, having free elections would mean religious tyrants and radical groups would have no trouble being elected. Shiites encompass what, 70 percent of Iraq? They are all viciously religious, and there is nothing to indicate that the above-mentioned democratic aspects would flourish if they were put in power. Culturally, intellectually, and religiously- The Muslim world is not ready or prepared for democracy to take root. For the violence we've endured to see them achieve it, they aren't fighting hard enough for it, or it is not in their current nature to accommodate the process. My belief is that it is the latter.
