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Thanks for writing this, Eric

This is one of the best times to be alive. Despite all the troubles, real and imagined, that we find in the media, you are right to say that freedom is on the march.

In the lifetimes of people now alive, freedom has vanquished fascism and relegated the alternative collectivist philosophy, communism, to a couple of benighted corners of the world and some departments on American and European university campuses.

These are fantastic achievements. Now the gold sun of freedom is rising in Ukraine. During the dark days of martial law in Poland, people would say that the winter belongs to the communists, but the spring will be ours. It looks like the Ukrainians can voice the same sentiment. As the days get longer in northern Europe, the light it returning spiritually as well.

There will surely be trouble ahead. Freedom isn’t easy; it is just right.

Liberals and conservatives should be pleased that the people’s choice of candidate ascended to office in the Ukraine. Whether he leads from American left or right, matters little in the initial stages of establishing a democracy.

Growing the economy is as important as insuring that the vast majority reap the fruits of that economic growth. For only in such a manner can reactionary movements be kept impotent. If Yuschenko follows the American pattern in the latter half of the 20th century, his country will be assured of a similar kind of growth and broad based prosperity the U.S. experienced.

I doubt Yushchenko will live long enough to finish his Term. DiOxine is THE most cancerous poison anywhere. Just ask the US Soldiers exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. Already, you can see the preliminary effect on Yushchenko’s Face. Next stage will be his vital organs…

Aldous.

Freedom is on the march. Afghanistan is now a free country that just held their first democratic election. Iraq, despite all of its problems, will soon have its own elections as well. Even though some still say that it’s none of our business ‘forcing’ democracy upon them, I am convinced that most Americans left and right agree that supporting democracy and freedom in these countries and the inevitable drive toward more freedom in the world is a good thing.

Oh, gag! Way to turn a good situation for Ukraine into more White House approved Iraq apologia. Spread democracy! Damn the consequences! The ends justify the means! Why can’t you just be happy for Ukraine? Why start blubbering about some “century of freedom?” Do you really think in rhetoric?

I think Eric felt the need to write, and I know I did, because memories are short. People easily forget and come to think that the situations they face today are natural or inevitable. They forget the struggle that goes into freedom.

We have all seen this revisionist history, and must be reminded of it before it is too late. A few examples.

In the middle of the 1980s, conventional wisdom was that communism was strong and permanent. When Ronald Reagan implied that it might not be so permanent, he was derided as a fool who would cause World War III by his lack of respect for established orders. You have to read the contemporary sources to know this, since it seems that everyone has forgotten this and most experts claimed that they knew or everybody knew the system was rotten. They didn’t. Even as the empire came apart, apologists for the old system kept on predicting disaster.

In the middle late 1990s when the Clinton administration decided to stand up for Kosovo we heard that it wouldn’t do any good. The FRY government would never give in. Some people brought up old stories about Yugoslav resistance in World War II. American airpower prevented a humanitarian crisis and helped a people be free. Now we have forgotten how easy it would have been to do nothing.

After 9/11 there was substantial resistance to going to war in Afghanistan. People called it the graveyard of empires. Millions of refugees were anticipated. Experts predicted starvation for the people. After the victory, we heard that elections could never be held. Now its hard to find someone who doesn’t claim that the defeat of the Taliban and elections were just natural and relatively easy outcomes. They weren’t.

Take the situation in Ukraine. When Colin Powell came out so strongly in support of free elections, there was gnashing of teeth that Americans were interfering where we didn’t belong. The Euro skeptics saw this as a form of American imperialism. (See below for a taste. I have mostly included rebuttals, since they are on the right side. You can easily find the original accusations yourself by following the references in the rebuttals, if you want to read such things.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1372536,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1364361,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1373721,00.html

People forget too soon. That is why we need to mark this equation. Freedom in Ukraine, in the minds of many, will soon go from being an American plot to a natural and inevitable outcome. It is neither.

I suppose that I do think in rhetoric. Just to top it off, let me quote the line that got Goldwater in trouble, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

Joseph,

I didn’t expect many comments on this. But I’m sure you didn’t mean to say that Democracy has bad consequences?

Spread democracy! Damn the consequences!

I am happy for the Ukraine. I am happy when people are freer. It’s part of what I believe in. It’s substantially why I supported both the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Thanks for the comments Jack, you defended my sentiments exactly.

Do you think democracy is free of deliterious effects? Do you think spreading democracy justifies killing tens and hundreds of thousands of people in its pursuit (hypothetical, don’t go bringing Iraq death tolls into this)? Do you think spreading democracy justifies invading sovereign nations?

All rhetorical questions, I know you do. If you subtract your heartfelt love of democracy from the equation and simply look at the facts, you would see that despite our good intentions, we end up appearing as just another conquering power. We might not set up shop and call it empire, but the mechanics are exactly the same.

I am happy for Ukraine, too. I was happy for Kosovo. I was happy with Reagan’s second term work with the Soviets. I was happy with our invasion of Afghanistan. And I would be happy to see more democracies develop throughout the world without our intervention. Otherwise if we must resort to the mechanics of imperialism to spread an ideology that we see as superior to all others then I’m not for it.

You must note that my argument with your post was Iraq apologia, not freedom, not freedom in Ukraine, not freedom in Afghanistan, not sunshine. Our efforts in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and our struggle against the Soviets were based on a real need. Invading Iraq was not. It was based on poorly thought-out paranoia.

I think you take freedom for granted. My experience is that freedom is worth the effort it takes to gain it, but that it takes much effort to do so.

I don’t believe the infrastructure that allows freedom is nearly as common or inherent as the impulses that allow us to strive towards it. While the impulse stowards liberty, justice, and democracy are deep seated, it’s only recently, and with great conflict and effort that they’ve come to pass.

The Yushchenko episode demonstrates the fragility of Democracy, and the commitment necessary to achieve it. It relates to the situation in Russia, where Putin has grabbed power insidiously, rolling back years of reforms, reforms that even before were undermined by corruption and the ghosts of the Soviet past.

Is this a call to despair? No, to action, to more complete action. The assumption in the nineties was that democracy was just going to wash across the world and remake it. The reality is, Democracy is not and has never been that easy, whether the means of peace or war are employed.

Context matters in democracy. You cannot set such a government up in blithe disregard of society it is supposed to represent, or in disregard of a the ongoing crises and conflicts in the region. We cannot simply wind up this movement and then leave it alone to work like clockwork. Democracy and freedom are worthy goals, but these are things that will not create themselves in the world’s societies, no matter the means employed.

Stephen

Hu-Rah

Joseph

Taking democracy for granted is like well fed people who can’t understand what it is like to be hungry. Sure, I could go for days without food – in theory.

Just for clarity, Jack, my post was aimed at Eric, rather than Joseph. I can understand his sentiment. In fact, it constitutes my main worry about our policy.

I don’t shy away from Eric’s version of foreign policy because I don’t have the stomach for it, but rather because I think he misses some rather nasty lessons history has dealt our culture an others in relation to events of this kind. If I thought we could change the Middle East for the better by force, I’d agree with him.

But my sense is that this war is going to be exhausting, resource-wise, and that our faulty case for going there is going to compromise any rationalizations for further force.

This is going to come back to haunt us, because we will be given less slack, allowed less trust on our word. It will also give the appearance that it is territorial ambition that drives our military campaign, not protection of common regional interests or vengeance on the terrorists.

The next war we get into, if we get into one, will be more difficult to justify and more difficult to work out logistically, given the problems that are going to come from this war in manpower and equipment areas. I think the American people are not prepared for another invasion anytime soon. My fear is that people like Eric will push us into one anyways.

That’s the last thing we need. What questions Iraq has raised about our policy will be confirmed with the next war. Additionally, we may not have the logistics necessary to take on this next fight, which means it will take a great toll on us in the form of a draft (more soldiers are necessary to take the war further) and further debt and economic drains as the war sucks greater resources out of the market.

If we have to make such sacrifices, let us make them in our country’s defense, not that of a theory, because the price of war is high, and those who only half-heartedly pay that price sooner or later are bound to run up a terrible butcher’s bill on our account with no reasonable gains to balance the terrible debt of life.

Worse, our debts, our exhaustion, and the pain and suffering caused by such unnecessary, elective warfare will make us more vulnerable to our enemies, who will happily exploit our problems to their profit.

I had the same misunderstanding of Stephen’s post, Jack, so I checked my post, took a right wing perspective, and found this:

Do you think democracy is free of deleterious effects? [yeah, I corrected my bad spelling]

I thought maybe the idea that one can see democracy as a flawed human institution with both foreseeable and unforeseeable misfortunate consequences could be seen as taking it for granted. And in an extreme way, that’s true. I can understand the perspective that we should be grateful with something as good as we’ve got, and if we’re not, we’re just being hypercritical but I think this attitude extreme because it’s simple complacency. You might take a missionary posture and seek to spread this best flawed human institution around the globe but this doesn’t change the fact that the underlying premise is that we have advanced as far as we will ever in political theory and implementation and all that’s left are the minor details.

And frankly, I dont like missionaries. If it’s good enough, it will sell itself. There were no cave-to-cave fire salesmen back in the day.

How were you thinking I was taking democracy for granted?

Joseph

Democracy is not perfect, but there is no legitimate form of government without the consent of the governed. We can dispute exactly how that consent is given, but that is just true.

I disagree about your belief that a good idea will spread naturally. Emerson was wrong when he said that if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door. Complicated ideas have to be actively propagated and democracy is actually a fairly complicated idea. We all have read stories about new democracies that stifle dissent in the mistaken idea that under the “will of the people” everybody should show solidarity. Remember the world of Daniel Shays (Shays rebellion)? I only paraphrase, “Democracy doesn’t mean doing what you want; it means getting other people to do what you want.” That is the attitude of many people in the early stages of democracy.

We also forget the extensive infrastructure of democracy that we have been building for more than 200 years. If you doubt what I am saying, try to explain how democracy worked in Florida in 2000. That, despite the sound and fury, was a success in that it produced a legitimate winner who was recognized as legitimate by most Americans. Such a successful result would be impossible in a democracy without the established infrastructure we enjoy.

Finally, democracy has lots of enemies. It is not only tyrants. Many intellectuals and philosophers are profoundly uncomfortable with democracy, which doesn’t seem to conform to their theories of what is good. I also suspect they dislike democracy which doesn’t usually provide a place of respect for many of them. Most will not come out against democracy directly, but they like to nuance it.

Anyway, that is why we have to be extreme in our defense of liberty. I don’t advocate we go out and conquer the world for democracy. That is an oxymoron. But when democracy is a byproduct of U.S. intervention (as in Germany and Japan), when it can be encouraged by the requirements of alliances (Turkey, Spain and Portugal) or the promise of membership in supranational organizations (much of E. Europe and maybe even Ukraine) it is good to take advantage of the situation.

P.S. I almost never notice misspelling. It is the thought that counts.

Good comments Briggs, btw, I had a similar gag reflex.

Whenever I read rightwing posts in the red column where the topic of “we are so noble for spreading American-style democracy around the world, whatever the cost”, I am always reminded of the old saw: A blind man on fast horse never notices a difference.