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Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
You've moved the bar. The question was: "What have we done to promote democracy?" _not_ "Have we succeeded yet in transforming any country from an authoritarian state to a functioning, Western-style democracy in the past three years?"
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I don't think that's fair at all. Look at my post, and you'll see that in places like Ukraine and Palestine, my question was, what have we done? Not, what was the result, but what have
we done?
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The answer to the second question is negative, of course, but its not a realistic question. Iraq and Afghanistan are clearly positive answers to the first question: Two authoriarian dictatorships -- one modern & secular, and one theocratic & non-modern -- have been overturned. Structures are in place in both countries to ultimately lead to a modified parliamentary system. Afgahnistan is further along.
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If you look back at my post, you'll see I acknowledged what's happened in both countries. Although perhaps I'm less optimistic than you are about what's going to happen. Because neither country's government has authority throughout its territory.
Clearly, Iraq and Afghanistan are different cases, because installing a new government is easier if you actually go in militarily to remove the prior government.
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As to Palestine -- several things come to mind (in terms of promoting democracy). You're right that Arafat's death was pre-condition for progress, but that's because he simply refused to change, and it doesn't mean we didn't try to promote democracy.
One key piece was freezing out Arafat completely -- making it clear that we would _never_ deal with the lying, corrupt, terrorist authoritarian. That helped force change by (1) changing the dynamics -- the Palestinian leadership couldn't spin their wheels and b.s. anymore, or use us against Israel -- and (2) by providing support for the anti-corruption crusaders in the PA. We also strongly supported Queria (SP?) and Abbas -- privately even more than publicly. The CIA served and serves an important role as a liason between the Israelis and the Palestinian security services -- helping them work together when the Palestinians wish to do so. We've encouraged Egypt to take an active role in maintaining peace and security in the Gaza Strip after the Israeli withdrawal. They've beefed up border security _and_ have agreed to help train new PA security forces in Gaza after the withdrawal (counter-weight to Hamas).
You might ask what the military and intelligence efforts have to do with promoting democracy. In my view they are key to setting the conditions to move towards a meaningful democracy and a functioning Palestinian state.
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It's not clear to me that freezing out Arafat forced any change, since the election happened only when he died. Not that I'm saying there weren't good reasons to freeze him out. The other things you mention are nice, but isn't there any part of our foreign policy that isn't about setting conditions for people around the world to move towards a meaningful democracy? 'Cause free trade and security both do that.
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As to what we do generally to promote democracy -- I'm not being a wiseacre when I say "google it." Even with the unfortunate cutbacks in our U.S.-sponsored foreign radio programming, we have several government agencies dedicated to providing aid and spreading democratic ideals throughout the world. (I don't know if the budgets add up to much more than a couple of billion dollars, but their work is meaningful.)
To say "we've done it for fifty years," or "we're not doing it for altruistic reasons" is rather beside the point.
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If you're saying that we're going to keep doing all of the things we've been doing for fifty years, that's fine and good. I just figured that for a subject that's the centerpiece of the Bush inaugural, there be something else there, but I guess not.
I wasn't trying to suggest that we do nothing to promote democracy. Duh. It's just that we often put those principles on the back shelf while something else is on the front burner, and so I wanted to know what Bush was going to different. You seem to be saying, not much. Maybe he just didn't have any other big ideas to talk about.
