Dissing Democracy in Asia

Quote:

Meeting with Pakistani leaders last week, Secretary Rice did say she looked forward to "the evolution of a democratic path toward elections in 2007." But she neither asked for nor received any sort of guarantees about elections, human rights or freedom of the press. She did bring up nuclear proliferation, but only in a perfunctory way. Likewise, President Bush had General Musharraf as a guest at Camp David in 2003, apparently without ever mentioning the administration's democracy program. This all makes a mockery of President Bush's inaugural speech in January, and is a prime example of the sort of dictator-coddling that, eventually, always comes back to haunt us.

Conveniently forgotten by the writer, India also has huge problems with human rights. In Kashmir, it´s troops have been no less eager to kill civilians than the Pakistani supported guerillas have been, and the fact that major Indian politicians have been linked with religious violence - mass murder, simply put - should be mentioned. Democracy itself is a just way of electing the people who run the country. It has itself nothing to do with the policies the country then adopts. Democratic states can be - and have often been - as ruthless as dictatorships in violeting human rights.