Churchill said in the British parliament that “democracy is the worst form of government,” and when the parliament gasped, he finished to its relief . . . “except all others” (that is, all other forms of government).
Churchill spoke after the victory over Nazi Germany (totalitarian dictatorship) to which victory he contributed as prime minister of Britain. But as of today the post-nuclear attack of China (totalitarian dictatorship) on the West (democracy) is within the realm of a future possibility, and so far the West has been barely aware of the existence of China, except recently, as a producer of toys, wonderfully cheap (slave labor), but sometimes toxic (absence of inspection).
Aristocracy (“the power of the best individuals”) as a form of government competed in ancient Athens with democracy (“the power of the people”). When John Stuart Mill published his “On Liberty” (in 1859), the form of government in the constitutional monarchy of Britain was still to some extent aristocracy. Even today, the prime minister, corresponding to the U.S. president, is elected by the parliament, which, in turn, was elected, at the beginning of the 19th century, by “the best,” accounting for a small percentage of the male population.
The problem was: Who are “the best”? John Stuart Mill said that his wife was more intelligent than he was. Why were women deprived of suffrage (the right to vote)?
John Stuart Mill was no doubt one of “the best.” As a child he never attended school, and as an adult he was not affiliated with any university. He was a thinker (like Aristotle), and he was known throughout the world (meaning the West) because he wrote books. Newspapers horrified him, and it is hard to imagine his horror if radio and television appeared in his time.
In U.S. presidential democracy, “the U.S. president is elected by the people.” Well, members of the British parliament at least know politically one of their own whom they elect. What did an American voter know in 1989 about a 65-year-old Texan oilman George H.W. Bush, and then in 2000 about a failed Texan oilman George W. Bush, except that George W. was a son of George H.W.?
Yes, in the last 17 years, we have seen that bad as democracy is, it better than all other forms of government, as Churchill said.
Mao in China, Stalin in Soviet Russia, or Hitler in Germany would not have focused on the oil of Iraq (or Iran) because all the wealth in their countries belonged to them. Besides, their absolute power could acquire in their countries all that wealth could acquire — and more. They focused on world domination, not on the conquest of small backward oil-rich countries like Iraq.
Mao’s and Stalin’s goal was to establish a world communist state, and that of Hitler to establish a world ruled by the supreme (Aryan) race.
How modest and limited was the goal of George H. W. Bush (a Texas oilman) and of his son (a failed Texan oilman), and of their oil cronies like Vice President Cheney!
Their war to conquer Iraq actually began in 1990. President George H.W. Bush appointed April Glaspie ambassador to Iraq, and on July 25, 1990, she met with Saddam Hussein. She was one of possibly blind tools of George H.W. Bush to assure Saddam that the U.S. would be indifferent to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait (an autocracy) to solve their territorial disputes. Actually, Saddam’s invasion was a pretext for George H.W. Bush to launch war on Iraq.
Yet Saddam was not overthrown.
The “sanctions” to bring him down also failed, and in 2003 the new president, George W. Bush, launched a conventional war on Iraq.
When I described the war of the Bushes and their cronies for the Iraqi oil, Edward D. Kutz from Arlington, Texas, sent an e-mail to me on Oct. 24, 2007, declaring that my description was ridiculous (at least to those of us who have an iota of intelligence). If our motive was to grab Iraq’s oil, then why didn’t we make any discernable effort to do so?
Well, according to a “Yahoo!” entry of October 25, 2007: "Reports in the Wall Street Journal suggested the [oil] contracts [in Iraq] could be worth as much as $900 m."
Halliburton “has a history of governments contracts” and will be a “leading beneficiary” of the war on Iraq. Mr. Cheney should receive huge financial rewards for the war on Iraq through substantial investments in the corporation he once headed.
Iraq is currently the world’s second largest source of oil, but the majority of subterranean oil reserves have never been tapped. After the war, when U.S. oil corporations have fully developed the industry’s potential, Iraq is expected to become the largest single supply of oil on Earth.
Vice President Cheney will not find it too difficult to share part of the money with oil shareholders in his government.
Such is the situation in the case of U.S. defeat in the war. What would it have been in the case of U.S. victory?
On May 22, 2003, George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13303, which was duly transmitted by the Internet and published by The Los Angeles Times on Aug. 7, 2003.
The Order granted immunity to U.S. oil corporations in Iraq from both criminal prosecution and civil litigation. Suppose Halliburton decides that $x billion in oil money should belong to a certain member of the U.S. government. Neither criminal prosecution nor civil litigation is possible.
To enliven the subject, let us imagine schoolchildren who already know that there are many countries in the world besides Iraq and Iran.
Surely some of them, such as China in cooperation with Russia, threaten the West more than would Iraq, even if Iraq did have several (!) atom bombs, or even more than would Iran if Iran did have them. So why this war with Iraq, which actually started in 1990 and which may start with Iran, as a war that President Bush compared to World War III?
As for North Korea, President Bush refused even to make comment. No oil! Exclusive attention to the oil-rich Iraq and Iran! Those schoolchildren who know about the existence of many other countries, besides Iraq and Iran, will define the cause of President Bush’s partially for them: oil.
So what’s the moral? Yes, democracy is the worst form of government — except all other forms. Human beings have resulted from millennia of creative evolution.
Since the 13th century, constitutionalism has evolved in the West to a certain livable stage of freedom, while in China, “the form of government” is a slave state, as it was millennia ago.
What is tragic on the world scale is that as far as I know there is only one presidential candidate — Rep. Duncan Hunter, R.-Calif., who speaks publicly about the China threat and is ready to defend the United States against it. If he becomes the U.S. president, the United States will be able to develop post-nuclear weapons, able to oppose the aggressive weapons, created by the dictatorship of China in cooperation with Putin’s Russia.
Then we will be able to recall Churchill’s words that democracy is the worst form of government (look at George W. Bush’s Iraqi escapade!) except all other forms of government.
On the other hand, if Duncan Hunter is not elected, but the U.S. president would be no better than George W. Bush, or any mute-on-China participant in the CNN debates of presidential candidates, then we can well expect a successful Chinese attack on the West by post-nuclear super weapons, which may include the annihilation of the population of the West (to create out of the United States, Canada, and Australia a “life-space for chicoms”).
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You may e-mail me at navlev@cloud9.net.
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