Letter of a dying Iraq war veteran to Bush

[IndyDave1776]

It seems that you agree then, why bother instill democracy in these nations when, as Reagan put it, we can't understand the irrationality of middle eastern politics?
Countries are infighting about theocracy and secularism and leaders and factions so why would we have the arrogance to believe we can help fix any of their problems? Let alone that it would be somehow worth the costs.

As for undermining democracy, I can think of a half dozen times off the top of my head that we've overthrown democratically elected leaders. The fact that these leaders may be worse than the ones they overthrew is really irrelevant. If we believe everyone should have democracy we can't complain when they mess it up. Likewise we shouldn't be invading countries under the guise of spreading democracy, as you've admitted democracy might not work out for them.

We are probably not that far apart. My position centers around the such examples as that the Shah (or his successor) would still be in power in Iran, and Egypt, Libya, and possibly Tunisia would not have had a regime change without our actions to either strongarm the sitting leader into not countering the revolution or else actively assisting the rebels. I will agree that the whole notion of exporting 'democracy' at gunpoint is so much nonsense, but I have found that most people on both sides of the political discussion want to have it both ways. What I consider significant is that those who have been kicked to the curb maintained stable countries and would still be doing so had we left them alone. As it is, I am given to suppose that whoever is programming the teleprompter is trying to start another world war. I can't see any other reasonable explanation for refusing to fix the things that are broken and working with devilish motivation to 'fix' everything that is NOT broken.