- Joined
- Aug 2, 2009
- Messages
- 4,496
- Reaction score
- 1,878
- Location
- DC
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Libertarian
The US has long pursued a goal of democratization in the belief that stable democracies provide the most liberty to their people and are least inclined to pursue wars of aggression against their neighbors. I believe this to be true....up to a point. And that's the rub. There are cultures that just have different values. Their desires and values are incompatible with western democracy and concepts of individual freedom.
Will we learn from this? Probably not. Unfortunately, a huge segment of the American population is incapable of really deep thought and analysis. They don't have the patience to really study stuff (it's boring!) since they aren't in school and they didn't study in school anyway. They can't really understand that there are people who think in radically different patterns and don't want a world in our image. And they can't grasp that Maslow's hierarchy of needs may not be correct for all people.
Look at what we did in the Cold War. We sometimes overthrew democracies if we believed that it went with our best interests. Things like Iraq are anomalies and came about largely for reasons other than democratization. Whatever policymakers say about exporting our values, America still comes first.