“Query: If democracy, from Latin America to Africa to the Middle East, brings to power parties and politicians who, for reasons religious, racial or historic, detest the ‘white, rich Western world,’ why are we pushing democracy in these regions?
Our forefathers were not afflicted with this infantile disorder. John Winthrop, whose ‘city on a hill’ inspired Ronald Reagan, declared that, among civil nations, ‘a democracy is … accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government.’
‘Remember, democracy never lasts long,’ said Adams. ‘It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.’
Added Jefferson, ‘A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49.’ Madison agreed: ‘Democracy is the most vile form of government.'”
[SNIP]
Homework: Make a list of all the pundits who persist in promoting the exportation of democracy. Unless it’s Willie Kristol, Ann Coulter, etc., provide links. Let’s out the Democracy Über-Alles Crowd.
Update (Jan. 15): In the above, as yet unheeded homework, I meant to include the neoliberals too. Out the bums who advocate wars for peace and/or nation-building expeditions.
A’s For Al Jazeera, becasue AJ is one of the best news channels. If I could get Al Jazeera, I’d spend much less time ferreting for facts absent from American “news” media.
WritesMarwan Bishara: “As the US and Britain prepare for covert war on Yemen, and following on their failures in Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan, Yemenis might wonder if the joke is becoming a reality.
One does not have to be a Yemen expert to tell you that further destabilising Yemen along the lines of Pakistan or Somalia is not sound policy, and that Yemen’s proximity to the Gulf and the Horn of Africa does not bode well for regional stability.
But that is exactly what will happen if the US/UK “counterterrorism” policy focuses on providing military support to a three-decade-old government that presides over an unstable and decentralised country.
By offering more military training, arms, naval patrolling, intelligence sharing and possibly shared offensive operations, the West might help prolong and sustain an autocratic regime that faces secessionist movements in the North and South.
Mostly, though, it will aggravate a fragile state of Yemen into a failing state.
Even if estimates are exaggerated (Yemen’s interior minister in 2002 put the number of guns at 60 million), Yemeni tribes are better armed than any other in the region and will not surrender their weapons quietly to the central government, especially in light of the declared foreign intrusion into their country’s affairs.”
[SNIP]
I don’t know who Marwan Bishara is, but do Brush up on reality with his Al Jazeera analysis of the “Onward To Yemen” impetus, courtesy of the neoconservatives and their neoprogressive philosophical soulmates.
Distrust my recommendation? My fervently pro-Israel father is surely credible on this front. According to dad, the only fair shake Israel ever gets in the media broadcasting in the democratic South Africa is from … Al-Jazeera.
“WE WANT TO FIGHT THEM OVER THERE, RATHER THAN HERE.” Ann Coulter repeats that embarrassing, Bush-era non sequitur, also a center piece of Bush’s foreign policy. With that line, Bush bamboozled Boobus Americanus into believing that war in Iraq and terrorism in America were mutually exclusive conditions.
Andrew Breitbart prefers to forget the many times Bush betrayed “red-state Americans.” But worse than that: AB seems to be accusing the “MoveOn.Org crowd” of maligning Bush’s efforts at preventing 9/11. Is he seriously defending the stumble-bumble Bush administration’s criminal negligence in the year before the most devastating terrorist attack on US soil?
Let us reminds Breitbart of Condoleezza Rice’s bafflegabs:
She ignored “a 1999 report by the Library of Congress stating that suicide bombers belonging to al-Qaida could crash an aircraft into U.S. targets,” stating that it belonged to the realm of analysis, and wasn’t ‘actionable intelligence.'”
On Condy’s watch America experienced perhaps the worst intelligence lapse ever: Remember the Phoenix FBI agent who wrote a memorandum about the bin Ladenites who were training in U.S. flight schools? Agent Ken Williams’ report was very specific. Over and above the standard sloth the memo met in the Washington headquarters, it transpired that the FBI was as concerned about ‘racial profiling’ then as it is today.
Listening to Breitbart and Coulter, you’d think that security breech involving Mr. Hot Pants Abdulmutallab, AKA the Christmas Bomber, rivaled the one that allowed 9/11.
Watch the duo:
Update (Dec. 31): Sigh. Just as long as they spell your name right, right? From where I’m perched, I’ll settle for “them” reading what I write.
In response to the missive accusing me of, hitherto, misdiagnosing Ms. Coulter’s Craft, here’s an excerpt from my 2006 “Coughing Up Some Coulter Fur Balls”:
Mencken certainly would have had few kind words for dirigiste Dubya, the ultimate statist. Coulter, conversely, has shown Bush (who isn’t even conservative) almost unquestioning loyalty, other than to protest his Harriet Miers indiscretion and, of late, his infarct over illegal immigration. Such singular devotion would have been alien to Mencken. Nor would the very brilliant elitist have found this president’s manifest, all-round ignorance forgivable or endearing—Bush’s penchant for logical and linguistic infelicities would have repulsed Mencken.
About foreign forays, Mencken stated acerbically that “the United States should mind its own business. If it is actually commissioned by God to put down totalitarianism, let it start in Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, Santo Domingo and Mississippi.” Mencken believed that “waging a war for a purely moral reason [was] as absurd as ravishing a woman for a purely moral reason.” Not in a million years would he have endorsed Bush’s Iraq misadventure.
Since he was not a party animal, but a man of principle, conformity to the clan would not have seen Mencken fall into contradiction as Coulter has: she rightly condemned Madeleine Albright’s “preemptive attack” on Slobodan Milosevic, as having been “solely for purposes of regime change based on false information presented to the American people.” But has adopted a different—decidedly double—standard regarding Bush’s Iraq excursion.
To repeat: Coulter is sui generis, but a Mencken she is not.
What readers find confusing is my unfem knack for fairly detailing the woman’s obvious talents, without fulminating excessively and vindictively about her failings. Coulter is a very talented Republican hack. Since I am quite comfortable in my unappreciated abilities, I see no need to denigrate hers. I know this is unusual, but it’s why rational individualists gravitate to this site.
Another of the many stories covered and analyzed on BAB for its significance ahead of the rest was that of Petty Officers Matthew McCabe, Jonathan Keefe and Julio Heurtas. The three Navy SEALs stand accused by Ahmed Hashim Abed—thought to be behind the premeditated murder and mutilation of four U.S. contractors in Falluja in 2004—of punching him. The real scandal is that our bloated behemoth of a military, the Navy in this instance, is acting like the state bureaucracy that it is and proceeding at full throttle against the these patriots.
Please! Bush was every bit as hateful when it came to unleashing his bloodhound, U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, on Border-Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, to give but one example of Bush’s many betrayals.
“The state’s ‘rules of engagement’ rule-out any meaningful defense of American lives and property; they are rigged against America’s defenders and favor her infiltrators.”
Don’t expect the megaphones for the Republican-cum-neocon cabal to be capable of articulating this reality. At core, they are tribalists and collectivists who cleave to their own no matter what.
