Com. Wanzala wrote:
"Whatever you think of Treanor, democracy is in mortal crisis and in need of serious review."
And it's utter nonsense.
He continues:
"I don't see that much difference between what Paul Treanor is saying and what Arundhati Roy has said about democracy."
Neither do I see much difference. What Roy wrote is also utter nonsense. People in the media like Thomas Friedman and Christopher Hitchens who bought the line that the Iraq war was about democracy were idiots to believe it. Even Wolfowitz never sold democracy in Iraq (for which he had no plan) as anything more than a potential positive side-effect. American democracy ENDS at the border. It has no pretensions to do otherwise. Only Europeans can claim some measure of international democracy and it's not really clear where intertwining treaties end and democracy begins in Euroland. Except to this tiny extent there is NO SUCH THING as international democracy.
The war against Serbia really started this line of "reasoning" on the left and led people to say things like: "Democracy is the Free World's whore, willing to dress up, dress down, willing to satisfy a whole range of tastes, available to be used and abused at will." As a political-ethical matter, I think the war against the Milosovich government might ultimately have been right, but it was by no means a blow for democracy, except to the small extent that it solidified the concept of international democracy in Europe. European democracy is an extremely important concept and has great potential but the war in Serbia was basically a decision that the E.U. plus NATO equals a sort of de facto peace treaty covering all of Europe. I, for one, don't think that's a bad thing and it may even have been a necessary beginning to a democratic and federal Europe. We'll see.
Iraq II has no such pretensions. The only blow for democracy being struck is possibly a lesson to U.S. administrations not to support convenient dictators in the future. Yeah, it's not much. Iraq II does not imperil democracy as such because obviously democracy had little or nothing to do with it in the first place.
However, I will say that if you want international democracy you first have to start with national democracy. The world is sorely, sorely lacking in national democracies. India, for example, may be a warty, ugly democracy (or democracy-like-substance) but it's certainly preferable to Pakistan's military dictatorship. Was partition a good thing for the Muslims of South Asia? As much as the people of Sikkim suffer discrimination from New Delhi, I would rather see Sikkim be part of India than fall under the control of the mandarins in Beijing. I think we even have to ask ourselves whether Bangladesh and Sri Lanka might not conceivably be better off as part of the Indian federal state. We could throw Myanmar and Nepal into that hopper as well, if only for argument's sake. As bad a democracy as India is, it's better than perpetual corruption, war, and dictatorship.
Although Roy is certainly an energetic social critic, I find it ironic when an Indian Hindu says things like: "Free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market means they are on sale to the highest bidder." Compare the social effects, in India, of the free market with the social effects of near-universal Hindu practices and taboos better suited to the fifteenth than the twenty-first century. While I would venture to say that traditional patterns of land ownership are probably India's biggest problem, very frankly, and with all due respect, Hinduism (not as such but as practiced) is probably number two. Ethnic politics and Islam (again, not as such but as practiced) are neck-and-neck for third.
Arundhati Roy is herself a product of and a great credit to secular Indian Democracy. Democracy is the Indian nation's greatest triumph. People like Roy would do well to stick to their democratic knitting (in her case, writing things that provoke Indians to take themselves seriously as modern people) and stop this irresponsible talk about chucking the whole system. If she keeps it up she may find to her lasting displeasure that there are plenty of Hindu Nationalists who would all-too-willing to oblige her calls for a "serious review" of democracy.
peace,
boddi