>I thought this was already an explicitly stated part of the Bush Doctrine,
>viz.: "Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I
>don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!"
>
>Carl
>Then he said one word - "Good" - and went back to work.
my son gets a real giggle out of this stuff. "Ma, Alfred E. Neumann with a goofy grin saying 'Good.'" and the belly laughs and goofaws begin....
But yeah, this is "only a dream American power can inspire," as Gary Schmitt wrote in the LA Times 3/23 <retch>
From June 25, 2000:
"In respectable circles the "inevitability thesis" reigns. The forces of globalization and the modern international economic system must spell doom for all dictatorships, regardless of what the United States and its allies do. So why do anything? Liberals who once demanded that the United States topple right-wing dictators, and conservatives who once toiled to undo communist governments, now worship at the same shrine of economic determinism, insisting that commerce and trade are the great solvent of international tyranny.
Republicans and Democrats alike put their faith in an imagined "iron law," according to which democracy must follow inexorably in the wake of economic development. Focus less on elections, they say, and more on building the "institutions" of democracy--as if the institutions of democracy in, say, Peru could be of much use when the elections are rigged or stolen.
Whether anyone actually believes all this is an open question. These are comfortable doctrines of passivity, well suited to these comfortable and complacent times. How nice to imagine that merely by enriching ourselves we can spread the blessings of democracy to everyone else. How much easier to provide endless democracy assistance to oppressed peoples than to confront their oppressors.
Someday we may pay a price for our present lassitude. The community of dictators works together at least as effectively as the community of democracies. Chinese hard-liner Li Peng just paid a friendly visit to Belgrade bearing millions of dollars in credits for Milosevic's starving economy. Milosevic, meanwhile, may be contemplating a sale of uranium to Iraq. Russia and China routinely defend both Iraq and Serbia in the U.N. Security Council. North Korea shares its missile technology with Iran. Iran buys cruise missiles from China. It's all very chummy.
And who says you can successfully consolidate existing democracies while giving a pass to the dictatorships in their midst? Would-be autocrats around the world won't abide by democratic norms if there is no penalty for flouting them. We may already be seeing a "Fujimori effect" in Venezuela.
Even in this globalized age of economic and technological miracles, the international club of dictators may well get bigger and more firmly entrenched. According to the Chinese press, Jiang Zemin recently offered Kim Jong Il some sage advice on how to evade the West's iron law: "Snuff out all [political] challenges when they are still at the embryonic stage." The son of Kim Il Sung probably doesn't need any lessons in snuffing. Nor does any other dictator canny and ruthless enough to have survived the 1980s intact. As the democracies consolidate, so do the dictators."