{"id":1290,"date":"2004-11-12T14:16:40","date_gmt":"2004-11-12T19:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/11\/freedom_taking_hold\/"},"modified":"2004-11-12T14:16:40","modified_gmt":"2004-11-12T19:16:40","slug":"freedom_taking_hold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/11\/freedom_taking_hold\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom Taking Hold"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wonderful. We have four more years of this to look forward to. From the Bush\/Blair press conference<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Q You know, you talk about democracy being so necessary. There are those who would say there is sometimes a harsh peace of a dictator. What if the Palestinian state comes up with somebody who is not a democrat, but is willing to have peace with the Israelis? And let me transfer that to the Iraqis, as well. What if the Iraqis come up with somebody who’s not friendly to the United States, is not a democrat, but it’s peaceful, is this something you can live with?
\nPRESIDENT BUSH: Well, first of all, if there’s an election, the Iraqis will have come up with somebody who is duly-elected. In other words, democracy will have spoken. And that person is going to have to listen to the people, not to the whims of a dictator, not to their own desires — personal desires. The great thing about democracy is you actually go out and ask the people for a vote, as you might have noticed recently. And the people get to decide, and they get to decide the course of their future. And so it’s a contradiction in terms to say a dictator gets elected. The person who gets elected is chosen by the people. And so I don’t — I’m not —
\nQ You can be elected and be a tyrant.
\nPRESIDENT BUSH: Well, you can be elected and then be a strong man, and then you get voted out, so long as you end up honoring democracy. But if you’re true to democracy, you’ll listen to the people, not to your own desires. If you’re true to democracy, you’ll do what the people want you to do. That’s the difference between democracy and a tyrant.
\nAnd the Palestinians may decide to elect a real strong personality. But we’ll hold their feet to the fire to make sure that democracy prevails, that there are free elections. And if they don’t — the people of the Palestinian Territory don’t like the way this person is responding to their needs, they will vote him or her out.
\nAnd the reason why I’m so strong on democracy is democracies don’t go to war with each other. And the reason why is the people of most societies don’t like war, and they understand what war means. And one of these days the people of the Palestinian — the Palestinians will realize that there is a bright future because freedom is taking hold — a future that enables their children to get educated; a future in which they can start their businesses; a future in which they’re certain that the money that’s going into the treasury of their government is being spent fairly, in a transparent way; a future in which corruption is not the norm; a future in which rule of law prevails. And that leads to a peaceful society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s surprising that despite President Bush’s thorough survey of history–a topic he undoubtedly reviews daily–he fails to recognize that many rulers have pursued their “personal desires” following an election.
\nBut more significantly, Bush completely dodges the important point here: what if an election helps to erect another anti-American government in the Middle East? Bush invariable frames the Iraqi election as an issue of freedom and democracy.
\nWhat a bunch of bunk.
\nThe United States’ primary objective in Iraq is to establish a government friendly to American strategic, military, and commercial interests. We couldn’t care less who the Iraqi people want in charge. If America was on a true mission to spread democracy, why didn’t we start in Saudi Arabia, where we already had troops stationed? Because we could deal with the Saudi leaders, just as we currently deal with our unelected allies in Pakistan and elsewhwere
\nFour more years. . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wonderful. We have four more years of this to look forward to. From the Bush\/Blair press conference: Q You know, you talk about democracy being so necessary. There are those who would say there is sometimes a harsh peace of a dictator. What if the Palestinian state comes up with somebody who is not a […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1290","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}