Democracy in Islamic countries

...ain't gonna happen.

The closest we find to an Islamic democracy is Turkey.

But it's not a real democracy. Not because people can't vote, they can, and in elections far more free than anywhere else in the middle east except for Israel.

But because it's real authority is its military, who answers to no one.

Three times the democracy has gone off track.

Three times the military has intervened: 1960, 1971, and 1980.

As coups go, these were quite benign, and mostly welcomed by ordinary Turks. Crucially however, all were the result of rising power of Islamic theocrats seeking to return Turkey to being an Islamic state, run by Islamic clerics.

The military set up a new, secular democracy, and turned things loose.

But what if the military had somehow acquired a general like Saddam Heusein, a power hungry sort who was disinclined to hand power back to the people? Nothing there to stop that.

So the prospects for a democratic Iraq are dim at best. It's a misguided goal.

We need to redefine our goals for the middle east, and to pick goals which are realistic.

One such realistic goal is to remove governments which threaten our national interests, which is different thatn governments which might piss us off on occasion. We're good at removing governments. Three days tops. We're bad at governing. Three years and counting.

Here's the rules: you fuck with us, we take you out. We don't much care who picks up the pieces. If they fuck with us, we take them out.