Monday, January 24, 2005
Are We Really The Only Ones on the Planet Who Deserve Freedom?
Freedom Is Not a Doctrine (washingtonpost.com): "Promoting Democracy Is the Wrong Priority for Foreign Policy"
I am always pleased when I can save time by reading the headline, and see just how dumb the article will be. Here we have, Promoting Democracy is the Wrong Priority for Foreign Policy. Does Richard Haass have an internal dialogue or an editor? Clearly neither worked when he put the title together, because the premise is so silly as to be jest. While I think there are grounds to debate about Bush's foreign policy, I also think that the broader desire for freedom and democracy fits well into our collective values and into the clear desire of the peoples we will be helping. In no small way, people like Haass provide fodder for intellectual amusement when they promote such idiocy in very public places. To think that Americans and Western Europeans are the only living souls that seek and deserve freedom and democracy is to show inappropriate hubris. For the party that has been the human rights party, they seem to have put the human rights picket signs down when this President has shown that compassion often has a toll, but also a huge payoff for everyone. Iraqis and Afghans will be the ones to tell us that. Haass clearly did not do his homework.
I am always pleased when I can save time by reading the headline, and see just how dumb the article will be. Here we have, Promoting Democracy is the Wrong Priority for Foreign Policy. Does Richard Haass have an internal dialogue or an editor? Clearly neither worked when he put the title together, because the premise is so silly as to be jest. While I think there are grounds to debate about Bush's foreign policy, I also think that the broader desire for freedom and democracy fits well into our collective values and into the clear desire of the peoples we will be helping. In no small way, people like Haass provide fodder for intellectual amusement when they promote such idiocy in very public places. To think that Americans and Western Europeans are the only living souls that seek and deserve freedom and democracy is to show inappropriate hubris. For the party that has been the human rights party, they seem to have put the human rights picket signs down when this President has shown that compassion often has a toll, but also a huge payoff for everyone. Iraqis and Afghans will be the ones to tell us that. Haass clearly did not do his homework.
