A tale of a political abortion

[mahnmut]

Why cannot every former dictatorship become a democracy? Even when its birth is being assisted by powerful democracies? The story of such a failure began exactly 10 years ago in a country that hasn't stopped bleeding ever since.

Comments

[fizzyland]

The corrupt, utterly brutal and unscrupulous dictator had to go.

How's that working out for ya?

[mahnmut]

Me? I'm being ruled by this:

[dwer]

I firmly believe that it is arguable that Iraq was better off under Saddam.

[mahnmut]

While this may well be true or not true, depending on the particular manner of application of those imaginary and highly arbitrary criteria that some would be willing to attribute to the level of "better-off-ness", I'm still not entirely sure how it's relevant to the central point that I'm trying to make here. Namely, meddling into something for a while without giving a damn about the longer-term consequences of one's actions, and then leaving the locals to deal with it all and washing one's hands with the excuse that something's gotten "better off" than it used to be, is a practice that has never led to anything positive in the long run - for all sides involved

[dwer]

I don't know if it can be formulated into points. The infrastructure wasn't destroyed. Violence was not part of the daily lives of the majority of the country.

My comment is relative to this point: "The corrupt, utterly brutal and unscrupulous dictator had to go. That was the ultimate objective before the US-led coalition that invaded Iraq a decade ago."

I'm not so sure that's true, and I think having done it has made Iraq as a whole a worse place.

[mahnmut]

In that case, I misunderstood. I do agree that Iraq has become a worse place overall in result of the war.