Some comments about the democratization debate
1. What amazes me about Western thinkers or commentators is the sheer arrogance they display. Australia and Italy are said to be backsliding on democratic norms, the Russians and the Arabs are said to be incapable of realizing democratic governments and a number of countries are labeled as failed states, but we (the Western nations) are supposedly the democratic paragons to be emulated. This at a time when the great paragon of democracy is waging an unprovoked and now unpopular war declared on a country that it has more thoroughly devastated than anything Nazi Germany did in World War II. That nation violates all the laws of man and God through officially sanctioned torture and keeps in power a highly unpopular leader who flouts popular will at will and we call that a democracy. Russia is called a flawed democracy because it keeps a highly popular leader in power through the perfectly legal and democratic device of changing jobs (something Western politicians are very familiar with), but George Bush’s America is to be emulated
2. The recent revelations of more torture and the use of renditions bring us to one more important question: Democracy to what end? If democracies conduct undeclared, unpopular and above all unjust wars on helpless peoples as the history of colonialism teaches us, is democracy that much superior to a peace loving monarchy or traditional regime.

2. As for the canard that for democracy to exist there has to be sufficient levels education (whatever that may be), India’s example contradicts that notion.

3. One more notion about democratization in the Arab world needs to be kept in mind “What would the natural evolution of institutions (toward secularism and democracy) would have been without the destabilizing effect of excessive and constant Western meddling in Arab states through oil politics, the state of Israel and US. Intervention?”

This said I still believe in democracy as a way of governance because as Aristotle said all other forms (on the whole) have such drawbacks. Yet a good democracy like a good marriage is something that has to be worked on. Democracy as practiced in the West seems to have fallen into some sad traps like complacency, lack of participation and arrogance. Above all there is a constant complaint among the populace in country after country that they do not feel as if the system is responsive as if decisions are made in their name by “the special interests” That should worry us and make us less arrogant, but it does not, as long as the GNP is increasing. Should we develop the concept of healthy as opposed to sick democracies?