Gen. Zinni: “An election doesn't equal democracy.”
By now, perhaps you've probably seen or heard what General Zinni had to say when he appeared on Meet The Press on Sunday. Here's what struck me when I read the transcript:
MR. RUSSERT: The president's dream is democracy, around the world and the Middle East. What happens to countries like Iraq, countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or in the Palestine area when Hamas is elected? Does democracy necessarily bring about a desired result from America's security interests?I don't know about you, but I believe Zinni's comments apply to us, here in America, just as much as they do to people in Iraq, or anywhere else.GEN. ZINNI: Well, first of all, you have to understand how you instill democracy. It isn't an election. An election doesn't equal democracy. Think about it. We need an educated electorate. We need political parties that are transparent, that people understand their platforms, that compete in a fair process. We have to have a governmental system that people are voting into, and they have to understand that, and then you can have elections. We've sort of reversed the process.
Look what's happened in Iraq. We've had three elections now, and we don't have a government yet that can stand up. There aren't people that, I think, really understood what they voted for.
I saw a scene in Basra, one of the elections, where a woman ran in so excited about voting, and then she asked the poll tender, "Who do I vote for?" And he told her she -- he couldn't tell her, but he had to read a list to her of 169 parties. She was confused. When he hit number seven that said the Islamic party of something or other, she said, "That's the one."
I mean, is that democracy? Are they voting how they're told at, at Friday prayers? Are they voting for sectarian leaders that dominate their lives? Do they truly understand what it's all about?
It's not just democracy. It's economic development. It's social reform. This takes time, takes an investment from the stable part of the world and the unstable part of the world to establish these.
I like your point, Ara.
But what struck me as I listened to the interview was that he was one of the few who was forcefully and credibly saying these things before we pulled the trigger on Iraq. And that, just now, after the corpse has started to rot, people like Russert are paying attention.
Yeah, I noticed that too -- he told the story of attending Cheney's speech in 2002 and being baffled by what Cheney was claiming was incontraverible proof of WMDs.
Russert quoted his comments from then and it was pretty devastating.
In other words, the outcome of the war was not only predictable, it was predicted by men of integrity like Anthony Zinni.
After reading the previous post I was going to comment that the Cheney "No Doubt Saddam has WMD's" speech with Zinni sitting there was the thing that struck me the most about what the MTP interview.
I wish he'd have thrown his medal at "Dick" and shouted there and then "You're full of Crap!"
And I also wish I had a pony.