Bush's new "faith"

Here is a commentary that I came across, in which Pat Buchanan wrote about how Bush's prosyletization of democracy has become his new cure to bring "peace" to the world. In particular, he talks about how bringing democracy to Iraq has not necessarily brought peace. Certainly, Saddam's dictatorship was a moral atrocity and, in my opinion, needed to be taken care of. I value democracy being an American. But Buchanan makes a good point that the more open the society, the more room there is for terror to be waged. He noted that nations that have dictatorships or harsh governments rarely have terrorist activities (not considering only Islamic states, since many terrorists are from those countries and would not necessarily attack their own).

Not only does democracy offer no guarantee against terror, writes Cause, democracies are the most frequent targets of terror. Not one incident of terror was reported in China between 2000 and 2003, but democratic India suffered 203. Israel, the most democratic nation in the Middle East, endured scores of acts of terror from 2000 to 2005. Syria's dictatorship experienced almost none. While Saddam's Iraq was terror-free, democratic Iraq suffers daily attacks.... Also challenging the Bush faith is Brian Jenkins, a terrorism specialist at RAND. He cites Colombia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Northern Ireland as countries where democracy has failed to end political violence.

I don't think anyone would wish a terrible despotic dictatorship to a country in order to eliminate terrorist threats, but we do need to be aware that with an open society, there is much more freedom to do ill as well as good. Democracy may be good in theory, but it is not utopia. People's free wills (and mindset) are always part of the equation. We just need to hope that this has not set a more catastrophic situation into motion.