Comment by kweingar
5 years ago
This is fun because American ideology makes this question tautological.
Any answer that could possibly be given will be invalid, because we wouldn't have invaded them if they were really a democracy.
Also I don't imagine that dead civilians particularly care whether the invaders who shot them were doing it in the name of democracy or not.
No, there are well-defined standards for what makes a country democratic. No country that the US has invaded comes remotely close on any criterion, right?
Invaded, maybe not. Regime-changed? Most definitely. We've sponsored dictatorial coups against democratically elected socialists and communist governments, assassinations, etc. Arguing that the US respects democracy would be quite a joke. I would also argue that "representative democracy" is no different than any other oligarchy, and the small amount of direct democracy and political power afforded to the average US citizen isn't all that much more than anywhere else in the world.
How puzzling, then, that the Ukrainians are so desperate to hang onto their “small amount of power”, and seem to see a large difference between that and being subject to a tyrant. Ditto the Belarusians.
3 replies →