I was just reading this entry by Leah over at Eschaton, and it reminded me that I've been meaning to document some of my thoughts here at some point.

Background. I recently read Fareed Zakaria's book "The Future of Freedom". This book got a lot of attention when it was released, pre-Iraq-invasion, primarily because of arguments that maybe casting the Iraqis loose into total Democracy without establishing some of the democratic institutions and traditions there first might not be the best idea.

What I took away from the book was the idea that Democracy is just one of many of our liberties, much in the same way that freedom of speech is. Also, in the same way that there is a spectrum of freedom of speech, and some ways in which that liberty is restricted (libel, yelling "fire", etc.), there is a spectrum of Democracy, and (as we're seeing in California right now), full-on, total democracy isn't necessarily the best place in that spectrum to be. In fact, one of the earlier arguments in the book is that some of the parts of the US that have worked best are the parts where we limit Democracy in favor of other liberties. A 51% majority does not have the right to use its democratic powers to limit my freedom of speech in this country....most people (insert snide Ashcroft reference here) agree that this is a "good thing".

He also mentions ways in which increased (theoretic) democratic accountability has actually eroded (practical) democracy. The most notable example of this is having our elected representatives' votes immediately become part of the public record. While theoretically this makes them far more accountable to their constituents, it also has makes them far more accountable to the monied lobbyists who fund their various activities. Now that a lobbyist can immediately see the results of their efforts, they can more accurately gauge the effectiveness of their spending on various politicians. Due to the asymmetry of the extent of the generally low level interest of any given constituent to an issue and the high stakes that a corporation might have, this has served the lobbyists very well. (As an aside, it was also interesting to think of this in terms of the properties of "ideal" elections that voting systems experts use.)

Much of what Zakaria said about "pure democracy" also reminded me of one o the chapters of Niall Ferguson's "The Cash Nexus", which I read for his class during my last semester of school. He talks about the establishment of democracies throughout the world: those that have worked, and those that haven't. One factor common among many that have failed is the presence of strong ethnic factions. When you allow a simple majority of voters to start setting rules, in an environment like that, you often end up with ethnic cleansing of minority factions. Without a tradition of liberties more powerful than just "democracy" (e.g. a Bill of Rights), its too easy to run on a simple campaign of "they suck", and then following through on that by strengthening your own ethnicity's faction via elimination of the minorities.

So...anyway, what does all this have to do with Leah's post that reminded me of this?

Leah says:

"More evidence that the Bush administration is holding onto the notion of a long, long, occupation with us, essentially, in control of them, and that Baker is just another way not to listen to those who matter, the Iraqis, who are telling us that though we may be relatively welcome in the short run, to help them transition from ruin to functioning, from despotism to democracy, that Iraq is not ours to shape, it's theirs."

Now, I'm in complete concurrence with those that think we should never have invaded in the first place. That was a mistake, and one that the administration lied pretty heavily in order to get agreement for. However, we can't fix that mistake by making another one. If we just pick up and leave Iraq now, we're likely to end up with a pretty ugly civil war situation over there, and we'll be directly responsible for it.

At the same time, I also agree that the US should not be sitting over there shaping the country into whatever we want. Personally, I think that should be the responsibility of the UN. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that the current administration would want to get them involved, and due to their past actions would probably have to pay a relatively high (diplomatic) price to convince other countries to commit their own resources to fix problems of our creation.

So...we can't (in good conscience) leave, and to do things right over there, we need foreign assistance. Let's hope nothing too bad happens before we have a chance to get some competence back into D.C. in 2004.