Unless the US adopts more inclusive policies toward Islamism, all US influence will go up in smoke one day. Dealing with Iran is the perfect opportunity to move forward in that way, preserving the chance to develop inclusive political systems amongst the Arab dictatorships without too much revolutionary drama.

There is no disputing your premise of the many interpretations of democracy. The list is a long one defining deliberative democracy, democratic socialism, direct democracy, participatory democracy, representative democracy and on and on. Its all nonsense since when you really start studying the forms you can distill all these nomenclatures down to several basic forms like republics, parliamentarian and tyrannies. Some of these are quite ridiculous like dictatorship of the proletariat. I kid you not. And futarchy is only something an economist can dream up.

The last thing democracy is about is justice, rights or liberties for the few or the many. Democracy means people/rule. Its a majoritarian order that serves the majoritarian will in pursuit of majoritarian power. All power is plenary in the hands of the People in Assembly. There are no presidents, prime ministers, senators, ministers or representatives. There is no understanding or tolerance of divided powers, separate chambers of governance or a separate judicial system above or beyond the power of the people in jury, which is absolute. Judges in such a system are merely to enforce the protocols of the court and proper conduct. They do not rule on the law.

If America were a democracy George Bush and hundreds of others, maybe thousands would have been condemned to death by the People in Assembly. The Athenians did it quite regularly not only executing generals and admirals, but also their leaders. Pericles, the greatest first citizen, war leader and demagogue in Athenian history just barely escaped such a fate himself. Alcibiades spent the last half of his life fleeing the wrath of the Athenian people. Themistocles died in a Persian satrap and others were ostracized like Miltiades. Democracy is about raw, unadulterated, people power and exercised exclusively by its citizens.

Everyone begs for it, and in the getting no one will like or want it.

Iraqi’s weren’t the only people to reject the US system of republican governance. Every eastern European state freed from the Soviet grip also rejected the US model. This attitude shocks Americans because we believe we have the best system of governance in the world. The truth is we don’t if we actually believe that government should serve the will and welfare of the people.

Parliamentarian systems are less autocratic in their politics, far simpler systems than the US republic and usually better serve the will, personal and social welfare of the governed. Consequently, such systems tend towards socialism, government control over the marketplace and curtailment of liberties that are anathema to the American culture and its Zeitgeist.

You are confusing the act of voting as proof of democracy or some artfully imagined version of. Voting is an activity in many systems of governance, even in dictatorships or communist like the former USSR. And when you say “free and fair elections of people to represent you,” your actually describing a republic by which citizens elect delegates to rule over them for specific periods of time. The people, citizenry or masses don’t rule in a republic. Read the US constitution and what it describes are the architectures of a republic. Section 4 of article 4 boldly states: “…The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…”

The court histories of the US revolution are idealized propaganda and the military histories aren’t much better. A more clearer picture emerges when foreign sources like British documents and diaries are accessed and a more violent and brutal war emerges that was principally waged between rebel and loyalist colonists, of which neither the Continental Congress, the British or George Washington had any control over. The founding generation, not merely the founding fathers had a belly full of Montesquieu’s “rights of man,” natural law, revolutionary anarchy and in the end the survivors where nearly all anti-democratic to a man. That’s why the US constitution is an anti-democratic document and government republican in form and function.

Sorry to see how disconnected or perhaps disgusted you are with what we all have to endure, never less this are the facts that shape our policies, if you are an American
I can see how you are relating all your current problems with the fact that the need for energy is forcing this country to adopt policies that are undemocratic and this might have diluted the absolute utopian imagery you might have had of a so called democracy

Can’t disagree more. Notwithstanding your beliefs, not one Arab state can claim being a democracy. Iran is a Shiite theocracy and Israel is evolving into a Judite police state of apartheid and ghettoization. And should some miracle of creation bless the world with a new, abundant and cheap energy resource to replace hydrocarbons, your head will spin at how fast the whole global community abandons the M/E to its fate.

Labels like democracy, republic, parliamentarian, plutocracy, oligarchy, monarchy, kleptocracy and a host of others informs not only the philosophy of governance that rules in such systems, but principally the architectures & structures of these various institutions of governance through which power/politics operates and is managed by parties, classes, wealth, race, tribes, creeds, etc.

Over time there have been many interpretation of democracy. Some of the most ruthless dictators in the world have evoked the word democracy, because they had the audacity to claim they were acting on behalf of the peoples’ interests.

There are obviously lots of shades of difference between the direct democracy of a New England town hall meeting and that of a brutal dictator. But the fundamental criterion for a functioning democracy is representation of the rights and interests of the many, not just the narrow interests of a privileged few, whether they be clerics, generals, or wealthy capitalists.

If democracy comes to the Middle East, it will certainly not be based on the US model. Someone I know worked with Iraqi legislators to build a functioning legislature. They typically regarded the US model as a failed model of democracy. Congress’ failure to impeach Bush and remove him was cited as one reason for their opinion. They preferred a parliamentary model.

Bottom line: if the ME becomes more democratic it will not be made in USA. It will be something different, which America should not rush to judge. (People who live in glass houses…)

Politics is the art of relevance and not the absolute, since a democracy is a political form it can’t be viewed as an absolute within it’s cultural, geographical and historical context, With that in mind Iran is more democratic today then it was 30 years ago but it will never be an absolute democracy, there has never existed an absolute democratic entity and I don’t think it ever will.

Iran, Turkey, and Egypt culturally and historically and religiously are the trendsetters in the Muslim world a more democratic form of governance by these countries will affect the entire Muslim population of the world. Arguably the Iranian revolution of the 1979 has been the biggest event in the Muslim world since the Ottoman takeover of the Byzantium in 1453, and the effect of that revolution has been weakening of the western powers including the former USSR. If invading Afghanistan was a pillar of lost USSR lost than why did soviets need to move in to Afghanistan a few months after the Iranian revolution did it had anything to do with their then soviets Muslim republics of central Asia or for the same reason why did US need to have Iraq invade Iran was it worried that the Iranian revolution will affect the US allied Arab Muslim countries.

So worries of the domino effect was and still is there and that is not only for the western side

Iranians have got more than enough troubles on the home front than to go crusading for more beyond their borders. And the only approval Iranians & Turks receive from main street Arabs is solely due to their support for Palestinians, which is a number 1 issue among all Arabs anyway. Beyond that Turks and Persians aren’t really all that much admired or have anything useful for the Arabs to learn from. It sure as hell isn’t democracy (sic). If there is anyplace on the earth where democracy will never take root, southwest Asia ‘fits the bill to a T.’

Arabs will have to find their own way to inclusive, representative government, if that is possible. They will get no help from the US or Europe. But democracy has blossomed throughout Latin America under the benign neglect of the US, so there is some hope.

IMHO many Arab states are pressure cookers waiting to explode. Successful Islamic alternatives like Turkey and Iran only add to the pressure.