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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Khatami: West can't impose democracy on Mideast

2006-11-02

Democracy is not a one-size-fits-all proposition, Iran's former president said Wednesday, criticizing US President George W. Bush's attempt to impose Western-style government on the Middle East.

Freedom is, democracy's not.

After facing more than 100 protesters as he arrived in central London to speak at Chatham House, an independent think tank, Mohammad Khatami took questions from a specially selected group. "One of the greatest jokes Mr. Bush makes is when he says he wants to export democracy. Democracy is not something to get exported or be given," Khatami said. "The seed was cultivated in the West, but the seed shall be cultivated in the East, in Islam, in a different way because the conditions are different."

Curiously, we were able to impose both democracy and individual freedom on both the Japanese and the Germans. Of course, we had to kill quite a few of them to do it. Perhaps that's the difference between them and the Muddle East: we're trying to kill as few of them as possible.

"Historically, human affairs depend on social conditions and experiences. The experience of one country, one nation, cannot be extended to another geographic area with a different culture and conditions," Khatami said, speaking through an interpreter.

"Except for Japan, of course. And Korea. And Taiwan. And Europe. But that's it."

"And Nicaragua. And El Salvador. And Chile. And Panama. And Grenada. But that's really it."

Posted by:Fred

#14 Methinks that is what he and his ilk are counting on.

These assholes need a taste of total war, American style. They'll regret that they were ever even born.

Posted by: Zenster 2006-11-02 23:38

#13 If Mr. Khatami is right, and that is what the current experiments in Iraq and Afghanistan are testing, then we will be forced to move to the alternative of total war.

Methinks that is what he and his ilk are counting on.

Posted by: Pappy 2006-11-02 21:34

#12 We have a choice, Khatami. We can either get people to learn to govern themselves, allow individual freedoms, and encourage personal responsibility, or we can destroy the Middle East, from Pakistan to Morocco. Now, what was that you said again?

Posted by: Old Patriot 2006-11-02 19:06

#11 "Of course, we had to kill quite a few of them to do it"

Yah well it helped that between the two of them, theyd gone to war with Britain and its dominions, Russia, China, almost of Europe, etc before we even got involved.

Iran, Syria, etc cant, and wont do us that favor. (Plenty of the others are even trying to stay "allies") So wed better be a bit more creative, and not just long for the glory days of 1946.

Posted by: liberalhawk 2006-11-02 16:06

#10 We can impose democracy in one of three ways: (1) Provide security and the help the middle east set up democracy as we are doing now (Afghanistan) (2) Allow "our" dictators to pacify their nations and then push them towards democracy (South Korea, Latin America, Greece, Italy). (3) Smash the countries and rebuild them with a democratic structure (examples are Germany and Japan)

I think we give (1) a try, if that fails we step back and give (2) a try. Then option (3) awaits. I expect increasing brutality as we shift down the scale.

Posted by: rjschwarz 2006-11-02 15:30

#9 Khatami: West can't impose democracy on Mideast

While we may not be able to "impose" democracy upon the Middle East, what we can do is make every alternative to it so uninviting whereby the sole choice that doesn't involve trmendous loss of life, military domination or nuclear annihilation just happens to be democracy.

Posted by: Zenster 2006-11-02 14:31

#8 If Mr. Khatami is right, and that is what the current experiments in Iraq and Afghanistan are testing, then we will be forced to move to the alternative of total war. Their choice.

Posted by: trailing wife 2006-11-02 13:46

#7 Khatami: West can't impose democracy on Mideast

Oh, the horror!

Posted by: gorb 2006-11-02 12:29

#6 But we can impose desolation and call it democracy. The current methods won't work, just as democracy in Japan or Germany could not have worked if Nazism and Emperor god/Bushido were enshrined as the basis of all law. Instead it took the deaths and conversion of the Nazis and Virtue of the Sword acolytes. Imperialistic islam is no different and in many ways worse.

Posted by: ed 2006-11-02 08:36

#5 Time is running out for the cultural marxists in our domestic left.

Posted by: SR-71 2006-11-02 08:35

#4 True, we can't impose democracy, but we can bounce the rubble.

Posted by: SR-71 2006-11-02 08:33

#3 And the price we'll have to pay for reaching that domestic consensus, thanks to the anti-war Left, will probably be smoking holes in the ground where a couple of our cities used to be.

Posted by: Dave D. 2006-11-02 07:06

#2 we pounded the absolute living CRAP out of those two countries; we beat them, literally, to near death.

Maybe that's the missing ingredient.

Yup. But I fear it's another decade or so before we have the necessary domestic consensus to do it.

Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-11-02 07:00

#1 Khatami: West can't impose democracy on Mideast

Maybe we can pacify the Islamic world by imposing Western-style democratic governance along with its notions of individual rights and individual responsibility, maybe we can't. We'll see.

We did it with Germany and Japan, and it certainly has done the job for the last 60 years: neither of those countries has shown even the aggressive impulses of the average garden vegetable in all that time.

Maybe the reason it worked so well with Germany and Japan, and hasn't worked well at all with the Islamic world so far, is that in WWII we pounded the absolute living CRAP out of those two countries; we beat them, literally, to near death.

Maybe that's the missing ingredient.

Posted by: Dave D. 2006-11-02 06:52

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