This is not a joke:
TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya wants to work with the United States to spread democracy around the world after Washington restored full diplomatic ties with Tripoli, the head of Libya's de facto single ruling party said on Monday.
"We encourage America on the path of cooperation and we hope we will cooperate together through cultural debate to spread democracy around the world together," Mustapha Zaidi, the top official of Libya's Revolutionary Committees, said.
The United States Government has just restored normal relations with Libya. By implication, Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi, having kowtowed to Washington's diktat in every possible way since the big scare he got from Saddam's overthrow, has just been anointed a democratic leader. And he will be "working with the United States to spread democracy"!
I wonder what Gaddafi's concept of "democracy" is. More importantly, I wonder what Washington's concept of democracy is. On one hand, it sees nothing wrong with granting an imprimatur of approval to the 35-year-old dictatorship of Gaddafi. On the other hand, it contemplates forcible "regime change" in democratic Iran, and continues to victimize the democratically-elected government of Palestine...
1 comment:
To the Bush administration, democracy means the same thing abroad as it does domestically. It has nothing to do with the will of the people, it is about ensuring that the privilaged retain their privilaged status, and that the underprivilaged remain in servitude to them. They are happy to support dictators and pretend they support "democracy" because a dictatorship just as easily fits this definition. As long as they maintain a favorable climate for investment, all is well. That is why socialists and truely popular democratic governments, like Chavez in Vennezuela, are so strenuously opposed.
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