NOTE TO WOULD-BE DEMOCRACIES: SOMETIMES YOUR GUY LOSES

So we're trying to create democracies now in places that have never experienced getting to choose their own leaders. That's a dicey proposition. And on top of this, we're trying it in places where tribal, regional, ethnic and religious loyalties are far more important than national unity. These places have been cobbled together as "nations" only because there were strong and brutal dictators around to enforce national unity. Anybody remember Yugoslavia? That was another psuedo-nation created by imperialist powers following World War 2 and it lasted only as long as its dictator did.

Field Marshall Josip Broz Tito was a real live rootin'-tootin' brutal dictator who knew quite well he was presiding over disparate nationalities and held Yugoslavia together by the force of sheer terror. After he finally dropped dead at the ripe old age of 87, Yugoslavia instantly reverted to the ancient pastime of all the Balkan States: earnestly killing one another for the pure joy of it. These days Yugoslavia is several nations, all hating their neighbors and laying claim to some portion of their territory. Map-makers at Rand-McNally are on constant alert for the formation of new nations in that region, their border erasers at the ready.

Most Balkan nations, by the way, are democracies, at least nominally. The electorates there, however, haven't yet gotten the hang of living with the fact that sometimes your candidate loses the election. When that happens in a democracy, that is not the signal to carve out another small nation or to start yet another ethnic cleansing genocide campaign. Unless of course you're a Balkan nation, where many centuries of murderous tradition trumps civilized living every time. The winners of the elections don't really get the concept either and usually start oppressing their nation's minorities and jailing the political opposition as soon as they take office. But, they are Balkan nations, and that is what they do. Babies cry, dogs bark and Balkan people slaughter one another and there's nothing any of us can do to change these facts of life.

So that leaves us with our grand experiments in Iraq and Afghanistan, two places with no history at all of choosing their own leaders, and in Iraq, their history is where history began. Civilization as we know it started there, and since we began writing down what men have done there hasn't ever been any sort of election there. Kings, emperors, dictators and conquerors have always ruled that region by force of arms. That's a huge problem, to get people to rethink 5,000 years of a way of life. And the way we went about introducing the joys of democracy to these people is petty problematic too.

We invaded their nation without provocation, destroyed and disbanded their armies, blew up a ton of their infrastructure, killed hundreds if thousands of their people and hung their leader. And now we're telling them to be like us? Not a whole lot there to recommend itself to emulation. How can these people tell the difference between America and Alexander, Darius or any other of "The Greats" who have arrived with slaughtering, conquering armies? To them we're just the latest dangerous horde coming to impose our will and sack a helpless nation. When we leave it will be a huge relief to the the locals who will then most likely go back to being ruled by some other tyrant who will erect many statues of himself and amuse himself by terrorizing his own people and imprisoning and executing anyone brazen enough to oppose his autocratic rule.

And then things will feel right again to most Iraqis. They know what we do not; that anyone they elect will be somebody that a significant portion of the population hates because he is not of their particular tribe and does not follow their version of Islam, and as such is eligible only for being murdered in his bed with his entire family. That was also true of the kings and dictators that have ruled them over the millennia but those guys gave the opposition no options at all when it comes to having a say in how the government operates and who gets to kill who. Which sort of suits the people there, who will be content to grumble amongst themselves about the government. Then the dictator will die or be killed and another one will take his place, just as it has been for 5,000 years.

And then there's Afghanistan, a.k.a. Illiteracy Central. Less a nation than a collection of tribal areas run by warlords, this country is even less likely to embrace democracy any time soon than a pride of lions is to elect their next alpha male. Democracy, more than anything else, requires the consent of the people. Look at our last President, Bush The Younger, who was hated by so many for his incompetence, his corruption and for invading the wrong country, of all things, and yet there was absolutely no movement in this country to overthrow our lawful government. In a democracy, when you make a mistake and elect a complete idiot, you ride it out as best you can and then elect someone else to clean up their mess, like America just did.

That method is far preferable to periodic civil war over who gets to run things, but again, that requires the consent of the people. In general, democracies are full of educated people. That's not the case in Afghanistan. In recent attacks, Taliban insurgents have been blowing up schools that had the gall to educate girls, a no-no for those cavemen. God forbid they got an education and became interesting people who would see right through the Taliban's misogynistic fear of women. These Taliban were the latest dictators in Afghanistan, a group of cretins so dense and backward that not only do they oppose education, they seek to ban music, dancing, movies and anything else there is to smile about in that desolate backwater.

The puppet democracy installed by America is failing. Meanwhile the only reason America had to be there, finding Osama bin Laden, is on the back burner while we distract ourselves by trying to instill democracy in a very undemocratic society. This is another place once conquered by Alexander The Great of the Balkan state of Macedonia, not incidentally, and another place where he made no difference at all in their lives or attitudes when he left. And their way of life and their attitudes haven't changed all that much since his brutal visit in 321 B.C.

Outside of enthusiastically embracing the cool weapons the West has supplied them with in order to kill whoever opposes them or even thinks about it, the Afghani tribal warlords and the people that they rule absolutely have no use for democracy or any notions of an equitable, tolerant and peaceful society. And just as in Iraq, we are not exactly providing them with any sort of stellar model of a utopian society when the first contact they have with us in on the business end of a gun barrel. The military exists not for winning hearts and minds, but for annihilating them. They are not exactly the Peace Corps. So to expect these two nations to embrace democracy is wishful thinking. Democracies always spring up when the people of a nation insist upon it and get rid of their tyrants. And once having done so, they commit themselves to putting up with their lawfully elected leaders for the length of their term in office, whether or not they voted for them.

America should just stop kidding ourselves that it can be otherwise and leave these places to their misery until they wake up and smell the coffee. Only at that point can we assist these nations if they want our help, and after what we have done to them, it's pretty understandable if they don't seek our counsel. Let's just kill or capture bin Laden and bring our troops home. Seven years in Afghanistan is far too harsh of a sentence for our soldiers, who didn't do anything to deserve it. We went to war there only because they were giving safe haven to our mortal enemies, not to redesign their government or change their way of thinking. That's got to come from within. It's none of our business how long that takes so long as they are not attacking us.