John Henry

Better for whom?

Someone once commented to me that monarchy is better than democracy, because a king only has one head to chop off. Presumably a paraphrasing of another famous quote.

The USA is, at present, a democratic country only in principle. It does not have a democratically elected leader or government. We can therefore only assume that the military actions of this government are not in the cause of democracy, but only in its name.

When trying to understand political matters, I often find it useful to conduct what I call "The Paxman Test". When considering "information" given by any person with political motives, simply ask yourself "Why is this lying bastard lying to me?"

Looking back through history, for almost every war fought for an ideology we can infer an underlying motive. The truth is that if you want people to fight (whether for your good, their good or somebody elses) an ideology is a very powerful way of doing it. There are many reasons for the strength of ideology. Here are some.

1) It is infinite. If your fight is against an enemy, they can be vanquished. If it is for wealth or land, once people have achieved as much wealth or land as they want, they will stop fighting. But you can fight forever to make the world more Democratic, more Communist, more Muslim, more Christian, etc.

2) It is mutable. A good ideology should be vague and broad enough in it's definition that one is able to tweak its interpretation to suit one's ends. The two main benefits of this are that it lets you to switch enemies as often as your imagination allows and that you can persuade your forces that their attack is for the benefit of their victims. "I'm here to liberate the gooks. Trouble is, the poor gooks would rather be alive than free"

3) It has no will. Unlike people, who are able to say that they'd rather not be liberated, thank you very much, an ideology can't turn around and tell you it doesn't want to be spread or imposed.

4) It is intangible. A good leader needs charisma. A good ideology does not. There are no short, fat, ugly ideologies with poor personal hygiene and an annoying, squeaky voice. They're all beautiful.

5) It allows the agressor to disassociate themselves from their actions. I just added this one after seeing the Saudi ambassador on TV excusing their human rights record with the line "As I said, we are following Islamic law."

So the answer is that America does not go to war to enforce democracy, it just uses democracy to go to war.

By now, you're probably thinking "Man, this guy's some kind of a paranoid freak" You're correct, but just because you're paranoid... I'm not saying these people are sitting round in board rooms saying "How can we spin this around to make it look like it's for democracy?" They just get carried along on the wave. Remember, the first person the liar lies to is himself.

Now don't take all this as some anti-republican, anti-american or even anti-authoritarian rant. Every nation on Earth plays the same game and always has done. I'm just answering the question in its context.

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"No one was behaving from very Buddhist motives. Then, thought Pigsy, he was hardly a Buddha, nor was he a monkey. Presently, he was a pig spirit changed into a little girl pretending to be a little boy to be offered to a water monster. It was all very simple to a pig spirit."