Remember Konstantin’s attempted take down of democracy as encouraged by the West? He’s having another go. Choice quote:
Saddam was definitely a tyrant but Saddam’s Iraq was a stable system that worked by its own laws.
Two near-suicidal wars and over a million dead notwithstanding, of course. Thus spake the Russian, who doesn’t like the West.
Saddam’s Iraq was never stable, it just appeared to be to unobservent outsiders.
The way Saddam ran his country was akin to the way a drunk balances on the middle of a see-saw. Only, Saddam wasn’t just trying to balance himself on the see-saw, he was trying to balance every single Iraqi on there too – most of them against their will.
As long as he could keep his balance, keep too many Iraqi people from jumping off the see-saw, or prevent a giant (ie. the US) from jumping onto the see-saw, balance would be maintained, and Iraq appeared stable to the outside observer.
The problem, however, was that the consequences of balance, or stability, being lost were catastrophic. The minute Saddam was pushed off, he, and and almost everyone on the see-saw with him, banged their heads as they hit the ground.
Democracy, on the other hand, encourages people to make a collective decision, rather than to rely on the whim of a madman. And, usually, people in democracies make the collective decision to get off the damn see-saw before they lose their balance.
I can think of a great many “stable” regimes. Stalin’s, Mao’s, the Khimer Rouge, Nazi Germany, Pinochet’s…..what do these all have in common?
Stability counts for nothing. I’d rather have a free balkanized country than a stable terror state like Saddam’s Iraq.
I think it is easier for westerners to say “oh, I’d rather have chaotic freedom .. than stable oppression” when we haven’t experienced that choice ourselves. It does take a certain amount of courage and character to take your destiny and your country into your own hands and create a representative political system. And to a certain extent, people who have lived under a dictatorship have had such ideals removed from their experience, either by education or environment. People who have never experienced such things actually find it a bit odd, in fact .. and the results are not always pretty.
I live in a part of the world (New England) where everything is decided on the town or city level, with town meetings where citizens are encouraged to participate and speak their mind. Taking my Russian wife to such a meeting and explaining what is going on … and why … is a real lesson in how this western way of thinking isn’t EVERYONES experience. It also can be difficult to explain that it is a better system than a kind of imagined benevolent dictator. She imagines some best-case scenario dictator, an enlightened despot … while I invariable will cite the worst case brutal murderous dictator.
Those nations Duffy cite were far from stable, by the way. Stable regimes were more along the lines of Nikita Kruschev or Brezhnev in the former USSR. Much more boring to cite those names, when you can incite passions by tossing out noted mass murderers and try to imply that they were stable.
I agree with what you are saying in one respect Wally, and for that reason I deliberately avoided referring to other regimes which may or may not have been stable. My complaint with Konstantin’s quote was that he though Iraq under Saddam Hussein was stable, and given that it had twice invaded its neighbours and twice come face-to-face with annihilation in response it was far from stable, even if we ignore for the moment the mass murder which took place from within.
Brezhnev’s regime was stable?
You don’t know what you’re talking about, W.Shedd. Read some on all the political dissidents, the camps, the KGB fear, the wispering one’s nationality, the economy based on exporting off natural resources and nothing else, the ingrained nomeclature and stealing culture perpetrated all levels of society, the despodency of the peasants and excess of the supposedly communist government. Heck, look in the history of Afghan war, for chris sake.
How old is your wife, W.Shedd? Has she lived under Brezhnev? Does she have any education? I’m not surprised to hear about her notions; Russians traditionally believe in “Kind Tzar”, no matter how many despots of all colors of p[olitical spectre they have to endure. Chekhov’s advice, about necessity of “squeezeeng a slave out of self, drop by drop” is not comprehensible to other Western nations – but it is still a sound advice for majority of Russians.
Myths about the stable Nazi state. Read “Inside the Third Reich” by Albert Speer and you’ll realise that the nazi state was inherently unstable, and a bureaucratically wasteful mess. So its total bullshit that its stable in other words. Authoritarianism usually breeds corruption, whether overt or not, and the state pie is divvied up in so many parts, job and ministry creation for the cronies piles up the misery.