DICTATORSHIP OR DEMOCRACY?

DICTATORSHIP OR ANARCHY?

(Comments: tony.papard@btinternet.com)

It is a story as old as the hills. America got involved in Vietnam to give them ‘democracy’ (in the form of napalm bombs which burned men, women and children alive). In actual fact the reason why the US got involved was because they knew, in a genuine free election, the Communist Ho Chi Minh would have been voted in as the President of a reunited Vietnam.

The Soviet Union and its allies intervened in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, both with the stated aims of defeating ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and ‘defending Socialist democracy’. Hungarian leader Nagre was then summarily executed, and Dubcek in Czechoslovakia was replaced by Soviet puppet Gustav Husak. However in Hungary, Soviet-installed leader Janos Kadar implemented many of the reforms started by Nagre, but managed to keep the Soviets on side. None of this, however, has anything to do with ‘democracy’, socialist or otherwise.

USA and the USSR intervened in other countries whenever it was politically expedient for their own interests. As American satirist Tom Lehrer put it: ‘they’ve got to be protected, all their rights protected, until someone we like can be elected.’

With Iraq and Afghanistan it was a little different. USA, UK, etc. went in to ‘defeat terrorism’, ‘dismantle weapons of mass destruction’ and ‘install democratic regimes in place of brutal, repressive dictatorships’. This was not strictly true of course – there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as the US knew perfectly well from its constant surveillance with satellites and spy planes which overflew Iraq regularly. There was also no terrorist threat from Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s autocratic rule, though Al-Quaeda were installed in Afghanistan with the connivance of the ruling Taliban.

As to replacing dictatorship with democracy overnight, this has rarely worked. Just look at the recent examples: the former Socialist countries, plus Afghanistan and Iraq. Certainly in the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia what followed the break-up of these socialist federations was not democracy, but civil war, corruption, genocide and anarchy. Some of the other Socialist countries fared better, but corrupt former Communist officials still held on to power, and much of the countries’ wealth, in many cases by simply changing the name of the ruling party, which now could at least be opposed in elections.

Dictatorship certainly hasn’t been replaced by anything resembling genuine democracy in either Iraq or Afghanistan. In both countries the nominal government is little more than a puppet of the US, handpicked from former exiles, with people the US doesn’t like excluded.

Sunnis in Iraq might well vote for Saddam Hussain back in power, but he is currently sentenced to be hung by the U.S. puppet courts of the U.S. puppet government. This is typical ‘victors’ justice’ since Saddam Hussain was charged with genocide, murder and torture, but the supreme leaders of the US/UK forces which also committed these crimes, George Bush and Tony Blair, have not been similarly prosecuted.

Also in Iraq, there may be some degree of democracy in the Kurdish and Shia areas, but at what price? The Sunnis now feel oppressed, and civil war has broken out with terrible murders, torture, brutality and terrorist acts. The end result will probably be the country eventually breaking up, like former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union.

In Afghanistan the rule of the government doesn’t apply outside the Kabul area. Elsewhere warlords rule supreme, and the Taliban are making a comeback.

The lesson to be learned from all this, is that the choice is often not between ‘dictatorship’ and ‘democracy’, but rather between the stability of a dictatorship, and the insecurity and horror of complete anarchy and civil war/terrorist outrages.

If democracy is to be restored, or introduced, in any country it is usually a gradual process, and has to be instigated within the country concerned, not imposed by another country, which is itself a negation of democracy.

The only alternative, where there is a really brutal dictatorship murdering and torturing its own citizens, is a carefully targeted intervention by a UN security force. Certainly not going in gung-ho with all guns blazing, bombing civilians indiscriminately like the US/UK did in Iraq, and creating a situation even worse than that which existed under the stability of Saddam Hussain’s dictatorship.

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