Re: But seriously, how is the current campaign in Afghanistan doing anything that can be remotely conducive of democracy,
I think you are looking at it through blurred lens -- try seeing it in another context, ie, helping Afghanistan in nation building or as the author says, the need to see it at a humanitarian level.
However, following your line of thought, it IS possible. How? It took Europe centuries and centuries of warring and tens and tens of millions of deaths before we could even begin to remotely say that Europe was demoratic. So, let me play the advocate: Given that, couldn't we say that the Afghanistan campaign is bound to be conducive to democracy?
To pose the two as causally linked in such a straightforward way seems questionable enough. To suggest that war and deaths are necessary and sufficient precursors of democracy seems more than a bit ridiculous. Yeah, that's the problem with dictatorships. Their countries have just not experienced enough wars and deaths to have become properly democratized. Yup, that's what's missing, alright!
It took Europe centuries and centuries of warring and tens and tens of millions of deaths before we could even begin to remotely say that Europe was demoratic.
Was democracy the result of these wars and deaths?
Were they inflicted by outside forces? When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
