Democracy: A red herring

By Andrew C. McCarthy, from the National Review

This is a war of will.

Very true, and we don't seem to have that will!

If we lose it, the historians will marvel at how mulishly we resisted understanding the one thing we needed to understand in order to win. The enemy.

Yes, someone who understands!

In Iraq, we've tried to fight the most civilized light footprint war of all time. We made sure everyone knew our beef was only with Saddam Hussein, as if he were a one-man militia no Sunni Baathists supporting him, no Arab terrorists colluding, and no Shiite jihadists hating us just on principle. No, our war was only with the regime. No need to fight the Iraqis. They, after all, were noble. They would flock to democracy if only they had the chance. And, once they hailed us as conquering heroes, their oil wealth would pay for the whole thing just 400 billion American dollars ago.

Well, lets stop kidding ourselves! Either we throw this away, or we fight it properly, but Ibelieveleive, there is no longer any way for us to win this, not because we can't, but because I can't see that we can stomach the fight ahead! Churchill gassed rebellious Iraqis, would you accept that? Could you?

For (Mohammedans), the president's euphonious rhetoric about democratic empowerment is offensive. They believe, sincerely, that authority to rule comes not from the people but from Allah; that there is no separation of religion and politics; that free people do not have authority to legislate contrary to Islamic law; that Muslims are superior to non-Muslims, and men to women; and that violent jihad is a duty whenever Muslims deem themselves under attack no matter how speciously. These people are not morons.

I think this is something we should all accept, these people attacking us are not dumb, not Arab versions of 'hicks' or 'country bumpkins', they are for the most part educated men, men with a strong faith in Allah and Mohammeds commanoffensivefensive as that religion may be, this is whabelievebeleive and many prbelievebeleive quite sincerely!

Democratizing such cultures in anything we would recognize as democracy is the work of generations. It is a cultural phenomenon. It is not accomplished by elections and facile constitution writing especially, constitutions that shun Madisonian democracy for the State Department's preferred establishment of Islam and its adhesive sharia law as the state religion. Elections, in fact, play to the strengths of Islamic terrorists. Jihadists are confident, intimidating, and rigorously disciplined. They are thus certain to thrive in the chaos of nascent democracies. Consequently, it should be unsurprising to anyone with a shred of common sense that terrorist organizations are ascendant in the new governments of Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories.

This is the truth, Islam and Islamic culture is incompatable with freedom or democracy, the only relatively stable Islamic nations are authoritarian monarchies, Morocco, Jordan, Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. They should not see democracy, for when this happens, Islamists gain traction, this is true in Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc, etc...

Time to face the truth, Democracy is unpaletable even here in the West, its dead in the water in the Islamic world!