Purposeful vs. Tyrannical Democracy

The history of Democracy is taking new turns. For the first time, an aggressor used its might and the label of democracy to legitimize a puppet it imposed on Afghan nation. At the same time two more "free" and "fair" elections will happen in 2005, in Iraq, under the auspices of the American occupation, and in Palestine, under the auspices of the Israeli occupation. The emphasis everywhere is on holding elections, which are declared either rigged (Ukraine) or null and void if winners are presumed to be anti-Europe or Anti-Americans. Elections are glorified if they happen to give direct or indirect legitimacy to dictators like Musharraf and Mubarak. Elections!! Is this what democracy entails, or it has been reduced only to holding elections? Are elections a magic bullet that legitimizes occupations in occupied lands, legalizes human right violations at home and abroad and allows concentration camps to keep thriving? Or democracy is reduced to a fig leaf of elections used for covering the lies behind consolidating a police state at home and invasions of sovereign states and butchery of more than 100,000 people abroad? Although voices in the US are muted, and while there are not yet demonstrations, as on the streets of Kiev, demanding free, honest, and general elections in the US, many nevertheless sense a changing tone in public discourse. There is a new curiosity; at least, about what democracy might entail as many realize that elections are not the end. The world's oldest democracy today stands as a model of extremism and intolerance. It presents to the world a model of the most effective police state ever existed. Its two party dictatorship is universally recognized fact. With the help of its military might and the use of veto power at the UN, it has ignored international will, violated almost all international laws and norms of decency. A look at American democracy forces one to ask: Is this the ultimately refined form of governance and way of life that the rest of the world has to adopt under the barrel of a gun? [more]