Forced Democracy?

[devarsi]

Can a country that has democracy forced upon it ever be democratic?

Isn't that a contradiction at the most basic of levels?

Also, should voting (like taxes) be a requirement of the citizens in the US?

[maine_raptor]

1. A Horse Brought to Water?????????

Somehow a picture of a solider holding a gun to a native's head and saying, "Vote, Damm you" doesn't fit my idea of Jeffersonian ideals.

Maybe it's just me.

Just as compulsory voting doesn't fit either. The expression "voted with their feet" is just as vaild as casting a ballot in my mind.

[devarsi]

3. I agree

Which is just another reason why I was against "democratizing" Iraq. Getting rid of a dictator almost always results in the installation of a new dictator, with new terrors in his/her heart.

Did I sleep through the debate, or has this brand of hypocrisy just never really been widely discussed?

[Muddleoftheroad]

4. You mean

Like Japan and Germany?

[devarsi]

6. Read "almost"

Almost always. NOT always.

Let me ask you this...If Iraqis came together, and decided that they would like to be representred by a monarchy, as other Mid-Eastern states already are, do you believe that the Bush machine would allow it?

We go, "heroically," to Iraq to set the foundations of democracy, and what we get is a monarch, or perhaps even a fundie Islamic theocracy?

That would be a huge failure, and IMO, there's no way that the Bushies would accept it. Therefore, the democracy movement would have to be enforced.

Isn't an enforced democracy a contradiction in terms? Of course it is.

[Muddleoftheroad]

7. Not at all

All democracies are enforced democracies, designed to keep people from setting up show as dictators.

[DuctapeFatwa]

2. A guy in a palace ruling by decree is hardly democracy

The last thing the bush regime wants anywhere in the ME is democracy. It is very unlikely that any country there could be counted on to put the financial interests of US companies above the well-being of its people. For that you need installed scumbag ho's.

[classics]

5. These countries are owned.

Lock, stock and barrel.

Calling them a democracy is just a front. They are conquered lands, run by puppet dictators that do the will of the conquerer.

[tom_paine]

8. Iraq cannot be a democracy

Because the Empire forcing it into it's new shape is not technically one...and is moving further and further away from it all the time.

So the question is academic, really.

[whoYaCallinAlib]

9. My guess is freedom loving people will always want democracy over

anything else. Iraqi's will embrace democracy in time. Might be a long time but sooner or later they will want it.