Monday, 4 February 2008

About Iraq

Santiago El Mercurio (conservative), March 27: Demagoguery has always been the gravedigger of democracy. The imperial pretensions of democratic regimes such as Great Britain, not to mention the Napoleonic wars in the name of "liberty, equality, and fraternity," have always been incompatible with democracy and republicanism. Rome had to give up its republican institutions in the face of the rigors of the accumulation of power which resulted from the formation of the Roman Empire....The Athenians killed all the adults of Melos and reduced their women and children to slavery in order to infuse awe among their real and potential rivals in the Pelopponese and guarantee their unchecked dominion. In the long run, the logic of this bloody and prolonged war put an end both to democracy and the empire. Although extreme, simplistic parallels with the current war by Bush in Iraq are to be avoided....in the final analysis, the logic is the same.
—Ignacio Walker

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