Democracy Begins At Home

By David Jaffe on

Though there is still substantial cause to fear for the state of democracy in this country, it is heartening to have one’s day greeted by news that, in Wisconsin, “voters in 24 of 32 communities approved referendums Tuesday calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.� Despite the non-binding nature of the referendums, the results speak to the growing chorus of voices challenging the President’s insistent rhetoric that the U.S. must “complete the mission in Iraq because the security of the American people is linked to the success in Iraq� and decrying the tragic loss of life. As of this writing, 2343 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, with 15 perishing this month alone. Tens of thousands of civilians have died, as well. How many more must violently succumb before we raise our voices loud enough to be heard and protest that enough is enough? How many more?

Posted in: Iraq War, Uncategorized, US News

3 Responses

  1. mike

    Wouldn’t have pegged you as a voter initiative supporter.

    The security of our country, and the world, IS linked to our success in Iraq. Have you noticed the more Americans turn on our president and our military efforts, the more brazen Iran becomes. I wish we lived in a world where we could ignore the evil and it would leave us alone. But that world doesn’t exist. Of course I pray for peace, and mourn the loss of each and every American life.

    To drop and run, as you advocate, would certainly result in greater bloodshed and loss of life in Iraq, and greater terrorism here in the US. Crawling up into a fetal position as the world watches will declare we are weak and make us extremely vulnerable.

    I am proud that our nation has moved in the direction of bringing democracy to this Middle Eastern country. Our work to rebuild its infrastructure and develop a self-sustaining government/economy is time consuming, and brings out aggression in those who hate change and fear progress. But time will settle the country and validate the American efforts to spread freedom and democracy.

  2. Jim

    A couple questions to Mike and other kool-aid drinkers:
    1) In his first presidential campaign, nation-building was a dirty word and W gleaned as much mileage as he could to differentiate himself from Clinton’s policies and actions regarding the wars/conflicts in Bosnia, Macedonia, Somalia, and Haiti. No nation-building, he said. Why is he now investing at least 2343 lives, and untold suffering upon untold thousands of multinational people to build “democracy” in a country that has never experienced it over tens of centuries? Feel free to comment on how our own experiment with this governing system is only 230 years old.
    2) Why aren’t we now actively exporting democracy to African and Asian countries? Hmmmm. Gee, you think oil has anything to do with W’s priorities?
    Mike, wake up and smell the petroleum.
    Jim H

  3. mike

    Nation building for the sake of nation building is another issue worthy of its own debate. But you simply choose to ignore that decade and a half that led to our presence in Iraq. You may recall, Hussein ordered the invasion of Kuwait, a long term friend. As it often does, America stood up against the tyrant, and supported our ally. Saddam backed down in the face of certain destruction and agreed to conditions, most significantly was the allowance of UN and US investigators to search for weapons of mass destruction.

    After agreeing to these inspections for some time, Saddam suddenly changed his mind in deliberate defiance of the conditions from the end of the war. President Clinton was well aware of the dangers, and spent years trying to find a diplomatic solution, but received no cooperation from Saddam. Upon his election, President Bush demanded compliance, knowing full well that if we back down, every terrorist and enemy of America will be emboldened by our apparent weak knees.

    With intelligence suggesting WMDs were in the works, and a history that showed Saddam had no problems using them, President Bush and PM Blair, two on opposite ends of the political spectrum, agreed that action was the only alterative, to protect Americans and those of the Middle East.

    We are nation-building in Iraq the same way we did in Germany and Japan after WWII. It wasn’t because we just felt like it; rather, America has a history of blaming leadership and not the people themselves. Like the Japanese and the Germans, America will do what it can to rebuild Iraq now that it has destroyed the tyrant that led them with iron fists.

    It’s ignorant to suggest that we simply chose Iraq as a place to experiment with democracy-building. We no more chose Iraq than we did Germany and Japan. And despite being less than 200 years old at the time, I think we can agree that we did a damn good job of building democracies in Germany and Japan.

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