Americans claim to be the most religious people in the world, and with that they claim the highest standards of morality. They claim that their children are pure, and that all citizens focus on their perfect, beautiful, white families, with the two and a half children and perfect grades, perfect high school, perfect town. They say that the nation is perpetually indebted to democracy for their prosperity.
The ideals of the Cold War are gone. During that time, America was afraid that the Communists would take over the world, and every American drew a collective gasp when any movement of the Soviet Union was detected. Their hand was everywhere (or so Americans thought), corrupting the youth and infiltrating the media, taking over their very lives! Democracy was on the defensive, and the only thing that they wanted, more than anything, was to contain Communism. The foreign policies that the USA put forth for 40 years were hinged on this idea.
Now, America is on the offensive. A gung-ho president and the catalyst of a terrorist attack have propelled the nation into a “War on Terror.” Troops were sent not even a month after the September 11th attack to clear out the so-called terrorist breeding ground of Afghanistan. The whole conflict was a means to try to get rid of Osama Bin Laden, a “terrorist mastermind” thought to be behind the attacks in 2001.They never found him.
Going into Iraq was completely different. This time, the USA wasn’t trying to find a terrorist mastermind; they were trying to disrupt a government thatthe president deemed, “Totalitarian.” Saddam Hussein was the target this time (they actually found him!), and the object was to implant democracy into the alien world of Southwest Asia. How were they going to transplant the government of a sovereign nation? With military might, of course.
Doesn’t democracy by force defeat the purpose of it? Democracy is supposed to be the choice of the people of a nation to elected their leaders and entrust them with the immense job of running a country. It takes organization, funds, and stability for a democracy to actually thrive, and if these basic necessities are ignored, the country will be worse off than when it started. France’s revolution was much the way that instable countries choose democracy. They broke free from their shackles, but then they had to deal with years of civil war and bloodshed followed by the reign of a dictator so powerful, he was above all law.
The major hole in the offensive “War on Terror” is the lack of consideration for the people of the countries that the USA invades. The strategies that the government uses make the assumption that the people of conquered nations will want democracy. Of course they would, with the tanks rolling over their neighbors and bombs destroying their homes and the occupying forces of a nation they have never seen choking the streets with their equipment. One Iraqi man pointed out in a CNN article in February that they have never seen anything like what democracy should be. They have only seen it hijacked and used as an excuse to invade their country.
“Is this what they call democracy?" he said. "We don't
want democracy that comes on the back of a tank.”
They can’t be expected to believe in and accept an ideal that they have only seen ravage their homeland. They liked their old government better.