From: hubert mania (humania@t-online.de)
Date: Thu Mar 27 2003 - 14:15:21 MST
Charles wrote:
"Germany had a democracy before WWII, and would probably have returned to
one as a choice after defeat, though our intervention probably hastened
things."
Max answered:
Let me see, "hastened" things? How about it was the ONLY thing that allowed it to occur? Remember, Germany was split in two, and shockingly, the Communist East (I know, *gasp*, a label) side was NOT a Democracy at all for its entire existence! Yet strangely, that side whose continued existence was due to the United States, the West, "somehow" became a democratic republic under Adenauer, Brandt, Kohl and the rest.
Max is right, but Charles too. Charles refers to the Weimar Republic, a parlamentary democratic system that existed *before* the Nazis seized power. So it was certainly easier for the lucky West to RETURN to a democratic system with the support of the USA This is what Charles probably means when he talks about the US "hastening things".
And this impression is quite right. We in the West had been lucky that Adenauer achieved the political linkage to the US and the Nato in the late 1940s, while the unfortunate East got stuck in a Communist black hole, called itself a democratic republic but actually was a country that locked up it's citizens within it's territory.I grew up in West Germany with that omnipresent awareness that it was the "friendship" with the US that protected and secured our young democracy.
But facing Iraq, all the Islam expert shake their heads in disbelief that it might be possible to install a democratic system in the Middle East. I wish you luck. Somehow I wish you succeed but I seriuosly doubt it.
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