Washington (AP) - Secretary of Defense Donald H.
    Rumsfeld is ruling out an Iran-style religious
    government in Iraq as well as any attempt by Syria and
    others in the region to influence Iraq's future: "If
    you're suggesting, how would we feel about an
    Iranian-type government with a few clerics running
    everything in the country, the answer is: That isn't
    going to happen," Rumsfeld said. On the other hand,
    Secretary of State Colin Powell said religious Muslims
    should not be precluded from governing Iraq: "There are
    Islamic countries that are having elections, Pakistan.
    Turkey. It's happening," Powell said in an interview
    Thursday with al-Arabiya, a television station based in
    Dubai. "Why cannot an Islamic form of government that
    has as its basis the faith of Islam not be democratic?"
    he asked...

Well, basically, because the one fundamental requirement of
democracy is the permanent and unequivocal authority of the
individual citizen: The essence of democracy is ALL power in
the hands of the people (on in the hands of the people's
unquestioned representatives).

There have been few successful examples of direct democracy
outside the smallest of social groups: Successful secular,
humanistic democracies [and note that the term "secular
democracy" is as redundant as "humanistic democracy" since
there can no more be a democratic theocracy than there can
be a democracy devoid of human beings... so I'll use "real
and true democracy" instead]... all successful real and true
democracies have been representative democracies in which
the people designate delegates to run their civil affairs
(to hold in trust the collective power as long as said
delegates remain really and truly answerable to the "wisdom
and follies" of the ordinary citizens who designated them);
and are not merely "represented as democracies" (in which
the "representatives" are selected for the people instead of
by them).

If people always heeded the wisest men then dictatorship
might indeed be the best form of government. But the sad
fact is that most people eventually end up following the
most ruthless or dissembling men (usually because those are
the sort of men who have the least scruples about feeding
them false hopes and other fatal flatteries just to gain a
following): Such men seldom prove to be among the most
altruistic of men, of course... and, in any case, it will
always be the case that no matter how much anyone cares
about us, no one can ever care about us anywhere near the
way we care about ourselves--This is essentially why real
and true democracy, one in which the people AND NO OTHER
ENTINY ultimately retains the final say on how their own
lives are lived... always proves to be the best of all
possible ways of living.

What would normally pass as political wisdom, the machinery
of government... those procedural "checks and balances"
against/upon majorities' inevitable excesses (or, "the
overwhelming passions of the moment"), parliamentary or
presidential in design... is/are of surprisingly secondary
importance because sham democracies are just as capable as
real and true democracies of setting up a "show" of those:

So, no: As the best expression of their maturely-evolved
political wisdom, the best democracies (liberal democracies)
display a drive to protect the greatest number of their
constituent "natural" minorities (of the elderly, students,
women, the disabled, farmers, et cetera) on the basis of an
accepted equality with whatever assumed majority (assumed
because of an explicit or implicit acknowledgement that
there really is no "natural" majority... except the most
general, and therefore immaterial). Less liberal democracies
may, until the maturation of their political wisdom, assume
there is some absolute "unnatural" majority or other
(racial, religious, et cetera)... usually at the expense of
all the "natural" minorities. While tyrannies and
dictatorships go that one step further and actually claim
that the state itself exists for the primary benefit of one
of these so-called "majorities" (aristocrats, party members,
et al)... to the eternal detriment of all the "natural"
minorities (most crucial of all that singular and most
natural minority of all: the individual citizen):

This is crucial because every one of the above forms of
government can stake a claim to being a democracy simply by
confining the choices voters may vote on. But you can see
those choices being whittled down the column: from those
liberal democracies that seem to overwhelm you with
candidates and proposed laws... down to those dictatorships
that hold "elections" with just one single candidate on
their ballot... and a "choice" of either approving the
whatever dictatorial law... or being thrown into prison. [If
merely holding elections were democracy then Iraq under
Saddam Hussein and Cuba under Fidel Castro were certainly
democracies and Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro were two of
the most legitimate democratically-elected leaders in
history, both having won nearly 100% of the votes in their
respective "elections."]

By the way, simply because the compromising of democracy by
the least undemocratic component is a good sign that "it" is
not real and true democracy... this does not mean that one
should always condemn any and all limited "confidence-
building" steps (taken by countries with zero democratic
traditions)... steps which may eventually lead to real and
true democracy: Even the best ideas, when first encountered,
are often less self-evidently sound than scandalous:
Absolutists are almost always wrong. And any notion that
life is an all-or-nothing proposition does not only disagree
with reality but is one of the most dangerous follies
humanity has yet to free itself from.

So it is folly, therefore, to automatically condemn those
otherwise undemocratic countries that are genuinely
struggling through clumsy transitions on their way to
democracy. And I do not condemn them. I am just opposed to
granting them at once honors that should be theirs only
after they've cleared the finish line once and for all.

    (AP) Although the 29-seat Council has no legislative
    power, it has given Qataris a chance to master voting
    and campaign techniques and has played an advisory role
    in policy making all in preparation for the elected
    parliament envisioned in the proposed constitution.

Yes, even as democracy tainted by the least compromise fails
so miserably at democracy, dictatorships (even when an end
in themselves) can function quite efficiently as purely
military, theocratic, or a mixture of both: Certainly as
many dictatorships have flourished by ruthlessly exploiting
the individual (or, in the case of empires, exploiting the
foreign individual) as have plagues & parasites. But, as the
real value of a nation is invested in the well-being of its
citizens, in the long run all dictatorships end up consuming
rather than nourishing the nation: So many centuries has it
taken mankind to learn at last that pyramid-building is not
worth the misery of its cost to the pyramid builders!

But even if, however real and true, no democracy has ever
proved perfect (basically because human affairs have seldom
proved perfect, if ever), there is still nothing preferable
in life to the very nearly perfect, perfection being
unattainable. So I can but concede, like everyone before me,
that there is no better praise one can lavish upon democracy
than to point out how it's never as bad as every other
alternative.

Only now, as I watch the fall of Saddam Hussein, I keep
listening to George Bush and others proclaiming that Iraqis
will soon be able to enjoy freedom "and democracy" ... as if
they were of the opinion that the reason all the European
nations are democracies and all Islamic countries
dictatorships were due to some sort of stupendous historical
happenstance amenable to the "quick fix." [Worse, too many
"Western leaders" seem eager to acquiesce to the fiction
that countries like Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan (and so many
others in which dictators kept in power by their military
connections have a lot more say over the affairs of their
nations than elected "leaders")... that these "dictatorships
by any other name" are somehow real and true democracies
and not merely "legitimate" governments (to be reluctantly
done business with until such a time as a real and true
democracy can replace them). A truly disheartening political
correctness in the diplomacy of Western democracies in which
it would never be tolerated that their own men in uniform
even so much as publicly express a political opinion---All
probably the result of the tragic collapse of our civic and
moral traditions in education which has given rise of that
modern morbid notion that not offending anyone is of a
higher moral value than standing up for one's principles.]

    "I think there are an awful lot of people in Iran who
    feel that that a small group of clerics determining what
    takes place in that country is not their idea of how
    they want to live their lives," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
 
Sure! And no doubt it's only a minority of Christians who
think Jesus was the Messiah [sarcasm]. This near-total
absence of knowledge of Islam in persons with positions like
Rumsfeld is appalling. They actually do believe Islam is not
all that much different than, say, Calvinism!

    ''Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your
     stop, you get off.'' From the prime minister of (for
     now) militant secularist Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
 
Theocracies, the lot of them, begin and end in evil, yes.
But any philosophy which systematically dehumanizes and
demonizes peoples it considers its eternal enemies is very
particularly unlikely to foster among its adherents any
compunction against even the most egregious human rights
offences. And, sure enough, over the centuries of Islamic
history the number of human beings who have fallen victim to
the worst indulgences of Muslim paranoia/intolerance is both
unprecedented in human history and difficult to accept as
reality even by a generation with as much knowledge as ours
of a Nazi Holocaust--that itself pales in comparison. Couple
this with the difficulty of any religion to evolve, and you
have a potential for inhumanity that has not diminished even
in the context of all the centuries of human progress that
have otherwise assuaged the zeal of most such severities of
the less civilized ancient world. Why is it necessary to
bring to the attention of Arabs and other Islamists
something which is so self-evident?

    [AMMAN, Jordan (AP): The Israeli-Palestinian conflict
    stands in the way of Arab states embracing democracy,
    even if they one day have a democratic Iraq as an
    example, Jordan's King Abdullah II said Sunday.]
 
Wonder what the excuse was before 1948? Then again, wonder
what the excuse will be if ever the Arab- Israeli conflict
is resolved? Well, now no one need wonder.

We here in the West may perhaps be best familiar with the
undemocratic nature of a theocracy in the architecture of
the Catholic Church bureaucracy, say... in which the
proposition that it is the Pope who must dictate every
aspect of Church policy/procedure is so set in cement that
it has even been embodied in a formal doctrine of absolute
rejection to any possibility of questioning the Pope's
authority (the infamous doctrine of Papal Infallibility):
Though the Pope "seems" to be "democratically" elected...
like every subversion of real and true democracy, he is
elected by/from a "college" of cardinals who are themselves
not democratically elected by (the) priests who are also not
democratically elected... every one and all of them being
selected, approved/appointed from the top (so the individual
Catholic layman has in practice no say whatever in giving
direction to the Catholic Church--something which is true of
practically all organized world religions): Islam may not be
as hierarchically strictly organized as the Catholic Church,
but while Christianity's founder specified that "His Kingdom
was not of this earth" ... the founder of Islam was
essentially an earthly military commander whose "organized
religion" therefore shadows the much more demanding designs
of a military code of conduct... in time of war: Islam
considers itself at war with all non-Muslims, and therefore
regards them all either as actual/potential enemies. [It is
both foolist and fatal to ignore this: Only by understanding
this can one grasp the absolute rule throughout Islam that
Muslims who convert to another religion must be executed as
traitors/deserters... and not merely damned/pitied.]

However more spiritual or more worldly a theocracy may be,
nations/societies that fall prey to theocratic bureaucracies
have doomed their citizens to absolute near-permanent
tyrannies whose eternal aim will always remain, above
everything else... the subordination of every individual's
freedom to its inflexible long-held dogmas (that long ago
proclaimed the sacred and eternally perfect revelation of
God Himself to some ancient "blessed" personality or other).

    "We have to be ready in the long term to establish our
    own Islamic state," said Asaad al-Nasseri, a prominent
    Shiite cleric who just returned from exile in Syria,
    speaking to the crowd in Nasiriyah. But Al-Nasseri also
    said clerics should play a constructive role in postwar
    Iraq without overstepping their bounds: "We have to
    preserve this country by respecting the professionals
    and not interfere in their work." As an example, he said
    clerics can help reopen hospitals without presuming to
    tell doctors how to treat their patients.
 
Is this schizophrenia, pragmatism, or just hypocrisy and a
deliberate attempt at deception and confusion of the enemy?

Of course, democracy is not something  an all-too-human (and
therefore imperfect) people can possibly be expected to
establish perfect from the start. Still, there should yet
be, already at its inception, one specific characteristic in
the nature of such a democratic genesis which will continue
to guarantee its undeviating growth (certainly long enough
for the people to develop such confidence in democracy that
they will always choose to improve even the most imperfect
democracy to entirely doing away with democracy itself). And
this crucial characteristic is not (as might be supposed)
the mere temporary assurance of equal power-sharing amongst
however many power-balancing institutions of government
(necessarily temporary because ALL such arrangements are and
will always be necessarily forever teetering and tottering
one way or the other with the heavy passions of the moment):
No, I am instead talking about something akin to the first
law of existence itself... that human beings must always
remain free to adapt to whatever shifting circumstances the
uncertain nature of life challenges them with. That is the
rationale for the inviolate political requisite that the
individual's power over the affairs of state must remain
paramount to/unadulterated by any proposed/supposed
eternally-valid higher principle (such as that of some
sacred religious requirement... although certainly not
confined to just such a strictly religious requirement,
since so many secular tyrants have draped sacred flags over
their countrymen's eyes to blind them to more earthly
matters)...

This "definitive requirement" of a real and true democracy
was deemed so necessary by America's impressively wise
founding fathers that they explicitly incorporated it into
the American Constitution itself. It is, in fact, featured
even more preeminently than the guarantees of "freedom of
speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably
to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of
grievances" in the very First Article of the Bill of Rights,
the wording of which specifies that "Congress shall make no
law respecting an establishment of religion." [The specific
wording of this opening Bill of Rights is crucial because it
is not always to be interpreted merely to mean that Congress
shall not establish a national religion (an interpretation
which makes the accompanying clause granting individuals the
freedom to worship as they please "seem" to be almost
contradictory) but, in some perhaps more liberal (secular
and humanistic) age to come... it may yet come to be
recognized more and more to mean specifically that Congress
shall not make any law which defers to a primarily religious
belief or doctrine (just as the laws of property were once
interpreted as protecting slave owners from their slaves'
freedom). For I choose to believe that those exquisitely
educated children of the Enlightenment commonly referred to
as the founding fathers were not merely unwitting victims of
their contemporary linguistic conventions, but instead very
wisely picked their wording with deference to the
politically correct mores of their less universally liberal
and democratic contemporaries: It is in fact a set of
reciprocal freedoms, the latter of which gives believers the
freedom to worship without government interference, and the
former of which gives government the freedom to construct
public roads/traffic laws without interefence from clerics.]

In this aspect (enshrining into the written laws specific
freedoms from religion) the "young" democracies of Europe
are even to this day not yet as constitutionally secure as
the venerable one of the United States. Albeit it is true
that in Europe, religion has in practice been almost as
effectively marginalized by a history of religious and
anti-religious wars and revolutions (and in some ways
religion has been, in practice, marginalized even more so
than in the strict constitutional way it has been done in
America), since even in European nations still quite
inexplicably saddled with a national religion, like England,
few would seriously contemplate any time soon some religious
dogma or other taking precedence over the expressed will of
the citizenry. [In fact, the Pope years ago prohibited
priests from holding common public office--something which
is not even banned by American laws.] Unfortunately, this is
nowhere near the case in Islamic countries (whose religion
does not share Christianity's abiding emphasis on the purely
spiritual over the secular)... where one has yet to perceive
even the first ever permanent real and true democracy.

Knee-jerk anti-Westerners with as likewise a lack of
knowledge (or acknowledging) of Islamic history may explain
that absence of real and true democracy among Islamic
countries by claiming that colonial powers imposed military
dictatorships on Islamic countries, or some such (completely
ignoring India and dozens of other non-Muslim former
colonies now democracies--including some in Latin America,
where such an achievement is nothing short of historically
spectacular for that part of the "undemocratic" world).

So, is it really some astonishing historical coincidence
that all European nations are real and true democracies
while no Islamic country is? Absolutely not! The assumption
that this is just such a coincidence betrays a fundamental
ignorance of what it is that goes into making democracy
possible in the first place (be it as a result of Europe's
anti-religious history or the enlightenment of America's
founding fathers--perhaps primarily even only of as few as
just three of them: Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin).

Oh, sure, Iran has a parliament; and as we all know, all its
members and its president are duly "democratically" elected
(but we all also know that the extent of the Iranian
Parliament's and President's real power is confined to
issuing parking tickets and other similarly "innocuous civil
duties & procedures"). The real and true power in Iran is in
the hands of the supreme religious authority, or the
Generalissimo Ayatollah Supremo, head of the Armies of Iran
and of all other organs of "real" power. Why is this?

And why is it that since the beginning of civilization
societies not secular and humanistic have failed so utterly
(Iran is forever in constant social chaos)... giving the
false impression that the only alternative to theocracy is a
secular imperialistic dictatorship, or, usually kingship)?

    Well, J.N. Wilford writes in the N.Y.Times: "the
    philosopher Seneca, in the first century AD, may have
    had an explanation for the Etruscan [static, ultimately
    doomed] civilization's decline and fall: "This is the
    difference between us Romans and the Etruscans," Seneca
    wrote: "We believe that lightning is caused by clouds
    colliding, whereas they believe that clouds collide in
    order to create lightning. Since they attribute
    everything to gods, they are led to believe not that
    events have a meaning because they have happened, but
    that they happen in order to express a meaning." ..."

"No one who believes he has achieved perfection is very
likely to seek further improvement." This is as true of
states, nations, and other human institutions as it is of
individuals: While a humanistic and secular society may
observe a duty to adapt, theocracies will try to fight that
neverending change which ultimately IS the nature of the
human condition... with always predictably disastrous
consequences (believing as they do that all things of God
are eternally perfect, and that all things are of God).

In the United States, for example, the people retain even
the absolute constitutional right to dissolve the American
government entirely (through a constitutional convention,
and subsequent ratification by the individual states). A
radical guarantee which itself contributes to the stability
of and confidence in a system which trusts its citizens with
such absolute power over their own lives.

People who do not understand the wisdom of the individual
(of democracy itself), who thereby betray the fact that they
cannot bring themselves to trust the individual (that is...
to trust democracy) may complain:

    "America is increasingly embracing a simple-minded
    populism that values popularity and openness as the key
    measures of legitimacy. The result is a deep imbalance
    in the American system, more democracy but less
    liberty." [from the N.Y.Times.]
 
Well, excuse me if I don't see it: To eyes which trace with
less anti-Americanism the historical journey of American
democracy it is instead very apparent that the American
democratic experiment has been improving almost on a day by
day basis since its inception: The United States has evolved
from a loose federation of states with legal human slavery
and the strict limiting of suffrage to white males with
property... to a nation today forever tinkering and tweaking
back & forth with every social and political freedom,
practice, and institution... ever with the purpose of trying
to ensure greater and more transparent political
participation to/by as many of her citizens as possible in
every aspect of their own lives (which is what the political
process really is). As I said, no open-ended human endeavor
(as is this American experiment in democracy) will ever
achieve absolute perfection, hopefully, and hopefully this
electrifying tinkering & tweaking (to encourage her
citizens' greater and greater participation in and exercise
of power over their own lives) will and ought to forever
press ahead--This is assuredly the best possible evidence
that America's democracy is as good as democracy gets.

I have always believed that it is better to be nourished by
the bitterest truth than to be poisoned by the sweetest
lies: Today there are liberal democracies like those of the
United States, which include great and powerful guarantees
to her natural minorities. And there are also other (not-as-
liberal democracies, with a more spartan and absolutist
notion of majority rule) which may yet one day move in a
more liberal direction. But, everything else being equal,
the one fundamental requirement which will ensure they
succeed as democracies remains their eternal commitment to
the unequivocal and permanent authority of the individual
citizen. This is why democracy succeeds in India, Mexico,
and Japan but not in Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, Indonesia,
Bangladesh... or anywhere else in the Islamic world to date:
Dictatorships come in every color and shade, but at their
core every one of them (whether they are secular military
dictatorships like those of Syria and Lybia or theocratic
dictatorships like those in Iran), all of them shortcut (in
some way, shape, or fashion) the paramount requirement of a
real and true democracy--that the ultimate authority in the
nation forever remain the ordinary individual citizen.

The pre-WWII Japanese certainly achieved a marvelous
combination of military and theocratic dictatorship (note
that ALL of these tyrannies have/had parliaments, as does
Cuba, China, and every other communist dictatorship that
ever was). Yet Japan today is a secular, humanistic
democracy. Why is this? In no small measure because when
Japan was occupied (and ruled with almost absolute power by
MacArthur) he "encouraged" the revelation to the Japanese
people that their Great Bugaboo (the sacred god Hirohito)
was just an ordinary human being like the rest of them
(whether MacArthur knew or not that this was ultimately the
crucial impediment to every Japanese citizen believing that
it was up to him and not to some "higher power" to exercise
absolute control over his own life, as embodied in his
participation in the political life)... thereby ensuring for
Japan the one fundamental requirement for the eventual
success of democracy there (again: the unequivocal and
permanent authority of the individual citizen over all
aspects of the state). And whether MacArthur did it
consciously or inadvertently... it was still accomplished,
to the benefit of Japanese democracy. Will some modern-day
MacArthur now come along to "reveal" to the Iraqis that
Allah is merely a silly superstition on the same level as
Santa Claus? Hardly: The original MacArthur didn't have to
worry about a dozen American allied countries that also
worshipped the silly butterfly-collecting Hirohito as a god.

But yet, no: It is NOT some "colossal coincidence" that all
the real and true democracies are secular and humanistic
(nor that the greatest and oldest of all democracies, the
American democracy, actually incorporates into its
constitution a specific separation of religion from the
state--a specification which time & again has proved crucial
in a land suffused with as much religious fundamentalism as
any in the face of this earth, including even the Islamic
ones). And this is because, I will repeat again and again:
there is an inherent assumption in all real and true
democracies (and preferably explicitly written up as the law
of the land) that it is the ordinary citizen who exercises
paramount power over and above every other entity/party in
the land.

There is no reason a people, however religious, cannot or
should not institute a separation-of-state/religion clause
in their whatever proposed democracies--except, of course,
that Islam itself (because of its historical descent) is in
its essence more a code of worldly behavior than the strict
spiritual guide that are most other organized religions:
Islam is a military code of conduct and ordinary human
behavior, and its clerics are the police officers and judges
of that comportment. One cannot be a good Muslim unless
every aspect of one's worldly behavior is formally approved
by the "superior" Islamic officer: This is a power of cleric
over the ordinary Muslim so absolute that the cleric, like
the soldier's superior during war, is "naturally" empowered
to hand down even summary death judgments (apostasy is
viewed on the same lever as desertion under fire--a tenet of
Islam specified in the Koran--demanding the immediate
execution of anyone that "deserts" from the ranks of Islam).
This all-or-nothing nature of Islam is why, historically,
practically the only way to short-circuit this "natural
state" for Muslims (to exist in a theocratic dictatorship)
is by an "unnatural" secular dictatorship (secular democracy
merely sets up one last vote... to end a secular democracy
that is an intolerable "unnatural state" for good and pious
Muslims to find themselves living in). [Albeit, apparently,
since Muslims with a talent for achieving power tend to
prefer the profane to the sacred, like most persons the
world-over with a talent for achieving political power...
cases of Iranian-like theocracies are historically almost
none-existent in Islamic societies.... where kings, sultans,
and other mighty rulers are rather the order of the day.]

In a true Islamic society there cannot yet be real and true
democracy (untainted by dictatorship or theocracy) because,
instead of empowering the individual (the hallmark of
democracy), like all religious bureaucracies, Islam makes
the fundamental demand that the individual conform to the
dictates of higher authorities who are themselves never
democratically elected: The good and pious soldier is
expected to follow the "sacred and perfect" dictates of his
superior authorities in every aspect of his ordinary life
(this is war, you know, and we are surrounded by the enemy)
... as opposed to expecting the society to follow the very
human "wisdom and follies" embodied in the will of the
ordinary citizen. [In an Islamic society free of secular
dictatorship, the way to tell whether any given form of
behavior is acceptable is for the proper cleric to judge
whether Mohammed approved of it (or might have approved of
it)... without giving any consideration whatever to whether
Mohammed is himself fit--any more than it would be expected
that an ordinary soldier question the fitness of his
general). And keep in mind that Muslim do not claim Mohammed
is himself in any way God: for in this military-like code of
behavior such a thing is not in the least required.

But it is really as simple as that: The only "choice" in
Islamic countries has always been between a purely religious
dictatorship or a secular dictatorship---to the exclusion of
real and true democracy. And those are the only alternatives
that will remain for Islamic peoples as long as they do not
marginalize religion, the way it has been done in the West.

Perhaps the imams themselves will see the wisdom of avoiding
the inevitable French Revolution-like response to religious
tyranny which may yet consume them, and secure their
salvation by marginalizing themselves. But what mortal man
really willingly gives up that which must be torn from him?

The real question is whether this "marginalization" of
religion can take place overnight among an Islamic people?
Did it happen overnight in Western society? Try to imagine
Europeans in the Dark Ages marginalizing religion and you
have a pretty good idea of just how difficult the
establishment of a real and true (secular and humanistic)
democracy is going to be in Islamic countries--Imagining
this you may begin to get an appreciation of just how
crucial for the development of secular and humanistic
democracy in the West were "little" historical items the
English religious wars, the Catholic-Protestant split, the
Reformation, and the French Revolution and its orgies of
priest-killings and carrying off of nuns to make of them
"productive" housewives instead: We certainly aren't very
likely soon to see the last imam being strangled with the
entrails of the last president-for-life. Albeit we can
always hope, of course.]

Islam, besides being something recognizable as a religion,
is a dangerously paranoid sect that believes itself to be
eternally at war with non-Muslims, And which,
understandably, especially when non-Muslims aren't looking,
promotes the notion that non-Muslims are not to be regarded
as "friends" (or that pious Muslims should only "pretend" to
be "friends" with non-Muslims as a temporary convenience).

    From the AP today: "Bahraini physician Hassan Fakhro,
    62, said he was saddened by the crumbling of the Iraqi
    resistance in Baghdad. 'Whatever I'm seeing is very
    painful because although Saddam Hussein was a dictator,
    he represented some kind of Arab national resistance to
    the foreign invaders - the Americans and the British,'
    he said."
 
A sentiment [which is far from being the exception in the
Arab world today--and yet it is]... a sentiment as warped
(and which ought to be supremely instructive--although few,
especially in the West, will grasp its significance)... as
warped a sentiment as would be the case were peoples of
Europe and America to root for (a) Hitler at war with non-
Christians simply because he was at war against non-
Christians, regardless how evil such a Hitler was or how
honorable and innocent were the "victims of said Hitler").

This is the reality-twisting nature of a religious cult
which, like most religions cults, feels it has less to
answer to the facts than to discipline in the ranks. [My
statement of facts may not be politically correct, or
diplomatically helpful at the moment ... but at some moment
we shall all certainly have to face the facts. And, as I
said before: it is always better to be nourished by the
bitterest truth than to be poisoned by the sweetest lies.]

    "Even if one group became strong enough and was
    supported by a majority of the people, the United States
    would not allow a religious leader to run the
    government, predicted Balkis Mj-ali, a political
    scientist at Baghdad University. "America will not give
    the freedom to the Iraqi government to do what it
    wants," she said. "Elections are a well-known game.
    Leaders will come and go, but America will still be in
    control of Iraq, its oil and its future." [N.Y.Times]

This is a pipe dream:  For a dozen years Iraq sold a very
limited amount of oil to the world and America was happy to
live with that. America was also quite happy to support
Saddam Hussein as long as he was at war with Iran--So
clearly as long as an Iraqi government is not interested in
directly thwarting American interests, it is not likely the
Americans will be interesting themselves much with who rules
Iraq: So there is no question that it will be entirely up to
the Iraqi people themselves to shape the sort of government
under which they will live; and whether they like it or not.

Will Iraq now produce a real and true (secular and
humanistic) democracy? Impossible things have been proved
possible in the past, yes; and they will prove so in future.
Iraq is one of the most secular of the Islamic countries:

    From the AP: Sheik Sabah conceded that it would be
    difficult to find people to lead the country, but he
    said that Iraq did not need a religious or tribal
    leader. "But we do need an educated person," he said.
 
However, to me, real and true democracy in Iraq seems
farfetched at this time... outside some truly unexpected
growth in political wisdom by the Iraqi people--the sort of
brilliant enlightenment that I, as the cynical and skeptic
person I have always been, find it rather impossible to
concede in most ordinary persons, and least of all in a
population of millions of them (who have not yet fully
stepped out of the dark ages of human civilization).

Why should all this be relevant to the American people?
Well, for one thing the U.S. is about to cavalierly toss the
better part of 70 billion dollars into the "black hole" of
Iraq (that's NOT Iraqi oil money but American taxpayers'
money, regardless of what the ole traditional anti-Americans
may chant) in the "reconstruction" of a country whose
existence may give nothing but pain and suffering to the
world (never mind to Iraqis) for untold decades to come.
[And this at a time when some of the most vulnerable
American citizens are being told by tax-cutting
fundamentalists to make do without life-saving medicines,
adequate education, and even the most basic services.]

Certainly it's already plain to see that it's very unlikely
any of us shall live long enough to see any real and true
democracy in Afghanistan, for example... where the best we
can hope for is the assemblage of as many as possible
influential Mafiosi godfathers we see there even today
carving out their individual "territories of influence" by
hook, cook, or the usual violence--The heads of these
"families" then obtaining a seat in a "crime commission" to
vote upon the most powerful or prestigious godfather the
title of president or prime minister:

These "godfathers" will not be elected from the bottom
(except by rigged elections) but will respond in traditional
Mafia style in order to stay in power. Or: "I will do this
favor for you... but someday, perhaps never, I may ask a
favor from you, dear citizen."

Not real and true democracy, certainly. But, like the also
Mafia-like political system of Renaissance Venice, perhaps
it proves to be a step in the right direction for an Islamic
world at long last trying to drag its carcass into the 21st
Century, still some four or five hundred years short of it.
And, who know, perhaps it won't even take the Islamic world
nearly as many centuries as it took the citizens of Venice
to finally achieve democracy.

Just don't bet on it, because thus far ALL attempts by
Islamic military dictatorships to evolve into democracies
have crashed on the fact that their Islamic citizenry is
fundamentally brain-washed to believe that the best answer
to any dictator is a dictatorship even that dictator fears:

Societies modeled on that religious paradigm will waste
their first freely democratic vote. And a few short-sighted
Islamic military dictatorships, carried away with their own
"democratic rhetoric" (as Pakistan and Turkey now seems to
be), have had to precipitously, and usually quite bloodily,
abrogate their "gift of democracy" to their peoples even at
the brink of implementation upon realizing that they weren't
really going to empower their citizenry at all! Surprise.
Surprise.

    One prominent scholar, Wahmid Ladhmi, a professor of
    political science at Baghdad University, compared the
    vacuum in Iraqi politics with the period of uncertainty
    and direction that followed the collapse of Shah
    Mohammed Reza Pahlavi's rule in Iran in 1979. Dr. Ladhmi
    said that after watching the American failure to curb
    the looters, many middle-class Iraqis feared that "the
    carelessness shown by the invading power," meaning the
    United States, did not bode well for Washington's
    ability to manage the complex interplay between Iraqi
    ethnic, religious and political groups. In this effort,
    he said, it was crucial that the Americans engage early
    on with Shiite groups that favor genuine elections and
    parliamentary institutions, and not allow other groups
    that have an agenda similar to the one followed by
    Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979 to gain the
    upper hand. "We would like to see a secular state
    preserved in Iraq," he said. "We don't think that there
    is a Khomeini here, because the Shiites are too divided,
    and we know that a great many Islamists in Iraq accept
    the idea of democracy and an alternation of competing
    groups in power through elections. But there are others
    for whom elections are a one-time thing, a way station
    on the road to the end of democracy," he said. "The
    message we want to get through is that no one represents
    the word of God. Or rather, that it is the people, not
    the clerics, who represent the word of God."

Apparently, ignorance of the true nature of Islam is not
confined to non-Muslims alone. But, after all, this is why
it does not surprise me one bit that some of the greatest
beneficiaries of democracy, like Bush and other Americans,
should also be among the most odious promoters of human
ignorance and superstition. Alas!

S D Rodrian
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