no democracy for you!

The US is abandoning plans to introduce democracy in Iraq after a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, according to Kurdish leaders who recently met American officials. The Kurds say the decision resulted from pressure from US allies in the Middle East who fear a war will lead to radical political change in the region.

FAN-tastic. So the US will go fight a war to remove a dictator and replace him with a military junta that will then, no doubt, be replaced with yet another dictator or military junta.

USA! USA! WE AER TRUELY TEH #1!!!!!!!!

What is facinating about this whole line of thinking is that somehow the argument doesn't think of the current situation (frequent bombings, sanctions, a population near total poverty and starvation, an impending war of possibly unimaginable chaos) as "destabilizing" to the region, and yet democratic elections that might produce a modicum of representation to the 75% of the country's population that are Shia Muslims or Kurds are viewed as too dangerous to the balance of the region.

Of course, Noam Chomsky has a few ideas about this, but he seems to be generally dismissed as a silly old liberal partisan by most people I talk to.

Posted by illovich at February 18, 2003 12:23 PM