Why is the West imposing Democracy?

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I note the whole Egyptian situation and it has me wondering.

 

The West (read US foreign policy) is hell bent in imposing Democracy on those countries not democratic.

 

Yet when it happens, it would seem that those countries spiral out of control and that there is military coups or assassinations of democratically elected governments and leaders.

 

 

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First, WTF?  The US didn't impose democracy on Egypt.  Nobody did except the Egyptians. 

 

The thing with democracy is that to work it relies on the strength of institutions (independent judiciary, non-political military, free press, politicians who are willing to step down when beaten rather than start fights, etc etc).  If your country has been a military dictatorship for 60 years and a colonial possession before that, you probably don't have any of those things.

 

It took the West a couple of hundred (war-ravaged) years to get to the (flawed) state of democracy we have now.  Bit much to demand the Egyptians get it right in a few months...

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Good thread. The sooner I'm declared global dictator, the better for all concerned.

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I dont have the energy .. yeah Pazza whataevs

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Damn the loss of Democratic Dictatorships. Up yours 'World Police'.

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It took the West a couple of hundred (war-ravaged) years to get to the (flawed) state of democracy we have now.  Bit much to demand the Egyptians get it right in a few months...

I know I'm being pedantic, but I'd say it took the West over two millennia, or 800 years if I'm in a good mood.

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Going the gun is second nature to those crazy Egyptians but turfing out a legitimately elected government by force sets a dangerous precedent. 

 

If he's a jerk, cool yer jets then vote them out.

 

Shootin' c*nts just gives licence to the next group of aggrieved lunatics to use force when they perceive things have turned poo.

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Egypt is a mess right now. Half of them don’t know what they are fighting for anymore.

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Haven't checked Reddit, but since they patted themselves on the back for removing the old boss, do they take responsibility for this also?

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Problem is that these emerging democracies lack patience. They think the change from a dictatorship to a democracy automatically leads to lower unemployment, higher wages, better health-care and education etc,etc,etc.

 

The people in these countries are too influenced by the cheer-leaders for democracy.

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Democracy is severely over rated.

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Going the gun is second nature to those crazy Egyptians but turfing out a legitimately elected government by force sets a dangerous precedent. 
 
If he's a jerk, cool yer jets then vote them out.
 
Shootin' c*nts just gives licence to the next group of aggrieved lunatics to use force when they perceive things have turned poo.

The biggest issue for Egypt is the commonly held belief that the government was a "legitimately elected government". Strictly speaking that is correct but technically speaking the election was a farce. Most non-Islamists will tell you that.
What the media does not tell you about Morsi's government was what they were doing and why the army moved against them. They were stacking the government with Muslim Brotherhood cronies who were non-educated and had no idea what they were doing. Infrastructure in Egypt was going downhill very fast as they slowly bleed money away from maintenance and repairs and lined their bank accts.
The supposed new constitution was not created under a bi-partisan setup but was written purely to support the Muslim Brotherhoods agenda. Not a single person outside of the Muslim Brotherhood supported the new constitution and no one except the Muslim Brotherhood wrote it. There were a lot of complaints about the whole process and that it was extremely non-democratic.
Something the Western Media has failed to cover in any sort of meaningful way was what Morsi's Government was allowing the MB to do in general society. Systematic and ruthless destruction of all Christian property. They were going street by street burning down all churches, burning down all Christian businesses and burning down Christian homes. The Interim Gov with the Military have started rebuilding these places for the Christians in Egypt, although it is difficult because the MB are still doing this by using the so called "peaceful" marches as cover to loot and destroy. The MB most recent appalling behaviour was to loot and destroy a local convent and march the Nuns through the city as though they were POW. The Nuns had always provided support and help to all Egyptians, including Muslims, and did nt deserve this action against them.
They were moving against the independent Judiciary and trying to remove all non-Muslim and non-Muslim Brotherhood judges. That was going badly and created a lot of turmoil.
Morsi granted himself sweeping powers that essentially allowed him to be a dictator. No one granted him this, he did it himself. Supposedly under the premise that it allowed for smooth progression to get a constitution set up but denied anyone else any say in what the constitution should be. Hardly the actions of a democratically elected Government.
Now, here is the clincher: Morsi and the brotherhood were moving against the military. They were attempting to remove all generals and leaders that were not from the MB and replace them with MB operatives. Imagine what would have happened to so called democracy if the MB got hold of the Military?
Most Muslims and most non-Muslims in Egypt fully support the military's actions on this issue, only the MB reject it.
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Mum always said the Muslims would take over. Why can’t people jisy coexist?

Someterrible scenes of pain makes the army look even worse.

Dling the right thibg iver what seems the best thing can always be a farce sometimes

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Mum always said the Muslims would take over. Why can't people jisy coexist?
Someterrible scenes of pain makes the army look even worse.
Dling the right thibg iver what seems the best thing can always be a farce sometimes

I would possibly agree with you, if that made any sense! Lol
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Mum always said the Muslims would take over. Why can't people jisy coexist?
Someterrible scenes of pain makes the army look even worse.
Dling the right thibg iver what seems the best thing can always be a farce sometimes

I would possibly agree with you, if that made any sense! Lol

 

Taj translated:

 

Mum always said the Muslims would take over. Why can't people just coexist?
Some terrible scenes of pain makes the army look even worse.
Doing the right thing [unknown] what seems the best thing can always be a farce sometimes

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I think the word is “over”

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I note from Icey's post no comment on the 278 people killed last week...including staff from Sky News.

 

Whoever fired the bullets and ordered such action would need to be brought to justice.

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Ice Temple's polemical response is one of the more informed takes on the current disaster that I have read anywhere. Perhaps part of the problem for the West following the removal of Mubarek was that there was no nationalist hero to run in a democratic election. How different things might have been with a Nasser, a man whose popularity rose after he dramatically survived a Muslim Brotherhood sponsored assassination attempt in 54.

Democracy can only exist within a national political structure. The irony is that the MB, the party that emerged victorious from the election, opposes non religious national states and promotes a pan arab Islamic world, one that would operate according to their interpretation of Islam, and almost certainly would have little interest in democracy, except as a means to achieve their wider goals.

The MB  has thrived since the 1920s under persection and oppression so don't expect them to disappear any time soon. They are a product of the greed of the West in the post Ottomon/WW1 period when the Brits and French treacherously carved up the Middle East as war booty rather than reward those countries like Egypt that had aided the West in the war. The resulting anger has provided a fertile field for likes of the MB.

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Most Muslims and most non-Muslims in Egypt fully support the military's actions on this issue, only the MB reject it.

 

Agree, but unfortunately the MB did get something like 25-28% of the vote in the last election (as far as I can remember) making them the single largest party? 

 

Even assuming (with no particular evidence) that a chunk of their support dropped off since then due to the tanking economy and their tendency towards autocracy, that's too big a proportion of your population for simply suppressing them to be any sort of lasting solution.  If MB supporters don't have any sort of committment to the 'new Egypt' or see it as their enemy, then it's doomed.  You can't hold a stable country together against the wishes of a quarter of its population.  I'm pretty fuzzy with what's happening now, but imho what the military needed to do was have a constitution written before the coup (it was a coup, even if for the best intentions, let's not beat around the bush) that established an Aust-style split democracy (with proportional representation in one of the two houses) which they could immediately go to the people with, and which would cut down on the power of any single party and mandate compromise. 

 

Unfortunately one of the hazards of having the US as the primary democratic power in the world is that newly-democratic states tend to adopt the US consititutional model, which is imho not really suited for a new democracy with a deeply split political base, as a powerful executive President can wield power far out of proportion with his support base.

 

And of course the flipside to what IT says regarding the planned MB purge of the military, is that at some point the military WILL need to be (somehow, probably gently and progressively) purged to a degree.  Under Mubarak, as often happens in military dictatorships, the upper ranks of the military became an aristocracy of sorts, with heavy involvement in business, politics, crime, loads of money and power, etc.  I would use the word corruption, but it's not accurate since under Mubarak is WASN'T corrupt, it was just how business was done.  This obviously can't be allowed to continue, in the long run, and any democratic govt of Egypt is at some point going to have to grapple with the problem - against the interests of entrenched power in the military, who have already shown their willingness to overthrow a civilian (of sorts) government that was messing with military perogatives.  It's going to be a very tough nut to crack.

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Both great and correct responses.

One of the problems faced anywhere in the world is the concept of democracy. How we, western democratic nations, verses how nations desiring it view democracy is vastly different in scope and understanding. That is what leads to the mess we see.