Nobody deserves democracy except me, personally.

All right, it's inflammitory.

*AHEM*

The US should give up actively trying to export democracy. It's very un-PC to say so but not every country/culture has what it takes at this time to handle the demands democracy imposes. Demands like:

1.treating people you don't know (i.e. people from a different, tribe, clan, family, province, neighborhood, building, ect.) decently

2.tolerating people your grandfather had a grudge against

3.not murdering people who disagree with you about how your country should be run

4. not murdering people who have a different take on God from you

5. resisting the urge to become petty dictator on your block when you become "block captain" or the equivelent in your county

6. obeying laws/rules even if they conflict with your immediate desires or interests (Put down that hooker and drain that slush fund, or how about just not running that red light in other words, behaving like a decent person or in colloquial speech a "grown up." Naturally, I don't mean people who are using corruption as the absolute ONLY means of feeding the family, I'm talking about everybody else, the people who constitute the majority of corrupt types.

Cultures can change, societies can outgrow millenea old cages and become something new. South Korea has (sort of), Taiwan has (at least compared to the mainland, Iraq hasn't). America should help people who are trying to make their country into something more than what it is. It should act as and example, it should support democratic minded movements with diplomatic support and money and even guns if appropriate. But short of stopping a genocide or pre-empting a REAL attack on the US (and the evidence had better be unassailable).

"Regime Change" anywhere in the world isn't worth a single drop of American blood. Governments grow out of and reflect the societies that create them. While a dictatorship can do a lot do destroy a civil society, societies that can obey the rules listed above typically do not spawn dictatorships (maybe you can find some exceptions, but they are exceptions, not the rule). Dictatorships don't materialize out of thin air they take root in sick and vulnerable societies that cannot (I say often CHOOSE not, [hey, even in a sick society you don't HAVE TO take the slush fund and hooker, you're not typically not obligated to shoot your neighbor] to follow the rules above). I'd rather not risk the lives of my family or friends who are in the military to help out a country where the population is just hell bent on treating each other and us like shit.

so endith the rant. I will now calmly accept the cutlery and furniture being hoisted my way at speed.