Q&A Friday: Will Democracy & Iraq Bring Peace To The Region

by John Hawkins | May 21, 2004 10:57 pm

Question: “When a working democracy comes about in Iraq and ultimately brings some degree of peace to this deeply troubled region, do you think Bush will get the credit he deserves?” — Archangel

Answer: Peace in the Middle-East, even if Iraq were to turn into a prosperous, functioning, democracy in a relatively short time frame, still isn’t close at hand. In fact, what we’re trying to do in the Middle-East is create instability and revolutions, not stability and peace.

That may seem counterproductive at first, but I shudder to imagine a Middle-East 20 years from now, with Wahhabism unchecked, the Muslim nuclear club being joined by Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, all those above nations still being run by the same groups of despots or their families, and a quickly dimishing supply of oil revenue flowing into the region as the world switches over to alternative fuels. If we don’t make moves now to help/encourage/force these societies to democratize and modernize, I suspect the world is going to get a really ugly, reoccurring, first hand look at what nuclear jihad looks like. Despite the fact that Al-Qaeda has already attempted to kill an estimated 80,000 people in Jordan with a terrorist attack featuring WMD, most people won’t take it seriously until the first nuke explodes in a city. What President Bush is trying to do is make sure it doesn’t come to that.

But ultimately, when things eventually sort themselves out, will President Bush get the credit he deserves? From conservatives and perhaps historians yes, from liberals, doubtful. Remember that there are still left-wingers trying to claim Reagan didn’t engineer the collapse of the Soviet Union =D

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/uncategorized/qa-friday-will-democracy-iraq-bring-peace-to-the-region/