Neocons May Get the Last Laugh
A Republican friend of mine sent me this article and I have to say it certainly looks to be correct. Democracy, or the appearance of democracy anyway, does appear to be spreading. Bill Mahr had a really good point the other day on Fresh Air... if you are a politician, you basically have no opportunity to change your mind or else you're labeled a flip-flopper and inconsistent. I was against the war in the way it was executed and I did not think it was beneficial for us to go into Iraq for any of the stated reasons (WMD, democracy, etc). However, let me take this opportunity to illustrate why I will never hold public office by saying I was wrong. There is no doubt that the war in Iraq has made it clear that if you appear that you are even remotely against the democracy of your people (and your name does not end in "hina") your days are numbered. I question how much of this is window dressing and lucky timing... Syria still has not pulled out; we do not know _what_ kind of democracy will be installed in Iraq (is a theocracy which is against the U.S. better than Saddam?); Arafat died opening up the opportunity for new leadership (unless the CIA is into giving people cancer); and so on. Even with the caveats, the world is taking notice. An open question is how much of a “crazy hobo” strategy is this? By that I mean if you're interested in getting everyone to walk on the other side of the street, one option is to ask every one nicely to move over and politely wait. Another option is to defecate on yourself and scream profanities at the top of your lungs. Are these folks moving over there because you've made a convincing argument or because there's so wigged out by what you're doing they are just staying as far out of your range as possible. My gut tells me the latter is the case, and this does not lend itself to self sustaining stability for the long term. The only way to get people to walk on the other side of the street and keep them there is to provide a more compelling reason for why that is a good thing. Of course my gut has shown bad predictive ability in recent months/years; maybe I should stop listening to it.