democracy, or our version of it, is more than voting booths.
democracy is security, economic opportunity, developed infrastructure and social welfare system, and a unified nation.
democracy is not what exists in iraq. what exists in iraq is people voting with bullets AND ballots to gain an edge on 'them' - the others.
tribalism and 'democracy' are a lethal combination, especially when the majority is as thin as it is in iraq, or there's a 3rd player that can tip the scales.
it's not that dictatorships are 'better' than democracy - it's simply that iraq is not a socially developed enough country to air-drop in some ballot boxes and tv air time, it has not had a calm-down period from a period of tension, which in fact has increased with the onset of 'democracy'.
and most importantly,
IT DID NOT CHOOSE DEMOCRACY
hosni mubarak, self-imposed dictator of egypt for (at the end of this term) 24 years, said it best (paraphrasing)- 'if the middle east were a democracy, whom do the americans think would be elected in - the democrats?'
iraq's borders have more to do with the political intrigue after WWI than they do with realities on the ground. Europe had huge wars in the 20th century to iron all this out, and like it or not, people don't like slightly different people, at least as far as their self-image goes.
call me a bigot, but that is life in the really-real world.
ethnic/cultural divides in modern europe take the (media) form of 'religious riots' - call it what you want, it is 'us' and 'them'. such has been life, forever.
here in canada (and not because the government forces it down our throats) we have a different kind of existence, we don't understand that even progressive, white, modern europe's singular national identities are at least partially ethnic. canadians don't have an ethnic identity, the brown guy next door watches hockey and eats donuts.
in europe, in iraq, things are different.
please take that into consideration.
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