The Rise of Illiberal Democracy

nasah,

...... i am willing to give up my tax break and pay an additional 5% in taxes to bring freedom to the people of iraq ....... and iran, syria and saudi arabia .......it is a very small price to pay to preserve our own freedom.............

......... i think sistani has learned a lesson from the ayatollas of iran and we will see a much more moderate government in iraq - maybe on the lines of turkey ......... as long as you can get a drink in baghdad and women are not forced to wear a chaddor, it doesn`t matter ........ bush is not carter - he will make sure the mullahs in karbala and najaf don`t get out of hand .......... have faith

re:#10 by malik99
(As long as a system of government provides food to the population, its a good system. Iraqis under Saddam Hussein were not dying of hunger. They were well fed, had the best healthcare system in middle east. In fact, as Romair has often so articulately pointed out, people from democracies such as India would have done anything to migrate to Iraq, rather than vice versa.)
The simple truth is that people will migrate to areas where they are rewarded according to their skills. For much of the last 50 years, India followed the Soviet model and stagnated. So, many Indians went even to countries ruled by despotic regimes just because these offered jobs with good salaries. Eg many doctors migrated to Saudi Arabia as they got payed better there. This does reflect the sad plight of many doctors in India but does not imply Saudi Arabia is a better society. If you ask the Indian migrant workers there, most will tell u that they are there temporarily and want to return some day.
Not so with many immigrants to countries like the USA. Most immigrants here would like to settle down if given the opportunity.
Iraq under Saddam Husain, was a secular nation and many Indians worked there. Iraq ruler was still despotic and there was nothing in Iraq that would have commended a large scale migration there. We have all heard stories about good health care etc etc before. Soviet Union was the first country in the world to have a ``free health care for all`` implemented for every citizen. It provided free housing and food to every citizen there. Why did the system fail? Not just due to cold war because Soviet Union rivalled USA in military hardware.
Human beings above all want freedom. Freedom to think, make choices, freedom of artistic expression etc etc. Therein, human beings differ from animals. Where such freedom is not available, the system will fail. There is an inner contradiction in a system where (as my fellow Russian resident during my residency days said once) a waiter in a restaurant got paid more than a heart surgeon. This was what was happening in Soviet Union where labor was valued more than creativity. So, that system collapsed on itself.

Pak is another example. Here, a benign dictator wants to do good for Pak but does not realize that the only good thing he can do is to give up his post and let democrazy bloom. Now, the inner contradictions are slowly coming to the fore. There is a lot of disenchantment among Baluchs agains the Army. Nobody consulted them about the Gwadar port. In a democracy, such things would have been freely debated. Ditto for Jihad in Kashmir. It was popular among the rabid mullah elements but these were a miniroty. In a liberal democrazy again the pros and cons of a jihad in Kahmir would have been debated before such things became official policy. Pak ruler is now between the rock and a hard place. He can`t put a complete stop to jehad, otherwise he will displace many powerful mullahs and Army commanders. He can`t have jehad openly either, as this would displease Uncle Sam. See the contradictions?
Sridhar