The Liberty Papers

Thoughts from Radley Balko

This is why “spreading democracy” is such a foolish foreign policy objective. There are lots of place in the world where we don’t particularly want a democracy. What do we do, now that our ally in Pakistan is suppressing dissent, punishing political opponents, suspending the country’s constitution, and declaring martial law?

When a country attacks us without provocation, or shelters the people who do, we should fight back. We should destroy that regime, in our own defense. But we should call it what it is: national defense. We aren’t doing it because we particularly care about the people in that country. Because we don’t. At least not when the choice is our safety and security versus theirs.

By pushing this “bringing democracy to the Middle East” nonsense, we’re now in the precarious position of explaining why we’re going to sit idly by while one of our allies wholly dispenses with democracy, and cements an absolutist grip on power.

Well, the reason is because they need to do it in order to prevent the country from descending in to chaos and civil war. And if that’s what it takes to prevent a nation of 100 million people armed with nuclear weapons from being turned over to fanatics then, well, that’s what it takes and we should just like Musharaaf do what needs to be done. It’s really none of our business.

Except for the fact that it does, as Balko points out, show up the hypocrisy of the whole “bringing democracy to the region” nonsense that we’ve heard from the Bush Administration since before the Iraq War. Even if it was possible to bring “democracy” (however you define that) to the region, it’s no more our job to do that than it was to bring “democracy” to the world in 1917 — and we all know how well that ended.