Jesse Jackson: Democracy at the point of a gun

[DrGonzoLives]

Chicago Sun-Times

Democracy, of course, wasn't our original intent in attacking Iraq. But the weapons of mass destruction turned out to be fanciful inventions of White House spin doctors, neoconservative ideologues and Iraqi con men on the Pentagon payroll, like Ahmad Chalabi. Bush admitted there wasn't any working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. (Iraq became a hothouse of terrorists only after we occupied it.) So democracy became a default position to excuse the worst foreign policy debacle since Vietnam.

Democracy, however, isn't easily implanted at gunpoint. The great imperialist nations -- Britain, France, Germany, Russia, even the United States in the Philippines, Panama and elsewhere -- were notoriously unsuccessful at building stable democracies in their colonies. Iraq, notably, is part of that record of failure. It isn't surprising. Democracy requires passionate democrats. It thrives when people organize themselves to be free. The British crown did not create America's democracy. It took a revolution, a new constitution, a civil war and citizen movements -- populists, labor, women and civil rights -- to forge America's democracy.