Does this geopolitical genius think he knows better than the Prime Minister of Great Britian? Does he think he has more intel on what the enemy is up to than Scotland Yard does? What a dumbazz.

Well Stewart uses England and Britain interchangably which is a little odd. Maybe he thinks Scotland Yard is in London.

As far as no democracies ever going to war with each other there was Cyrpus and Turkey in the 1970s who were not only democracies but NATO allies(!).

Tony Blair came off quite well here though the globalist interfaith mush he was espousing at the beginning hurt my brain.

I agreed with getting rid of Saddam and WMDs but creating a genuine democracy requires a demos capable of responsible self-government and a large die-in-the-wool Arab Muslims population does not look promising.

I thought Stewart’s David Llyod George reference was spot on. Britain liberated Iraq from the Ottomans in 1917 and after a genuine attempt at nation building that ran aground chiefly due to Sunni-Shia divisions cut their losses in 1920.

aengus on September 19, 2008 at 8:34 PM

The thing I always appreciated about Tony Blair was his judgment about what was most important. I know he would never see eye to eye with Bush on most political topics, but he recognized the threat and basically said, “you know what? Let’s save civilization first and then we can argue semantics about social issues.”

But nothing Blair has done has made any positive difference to saving Britain from Islam. In the six years from 9/11 to his resignation Muslims continued to flood into Britain to ruin it.

Hmmm..so kicking out the guy who led your country into war, & replacing him with someone who was against the war, is not a good thing to do? Hmmm…

Gordon Brown wasn’t against the war. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer for many years and so it would have been inappropriate for him to express any disapproval at all.

aengus on September 19, 2008 at 8:43 PM

Janos Hunyadi,

Calling Turkey a democracy is too much of a stretch: It is an authoritarian state with some democratic trappings, much like Mexico or Algeria

It would be too much of a stretch nowadays I admit but the Kemalists were running a democracy (in terms of fair voting) since the break up of the Ottoman Empire. They’ve had many leaders peacefully and constitutionally transfer power to one another Besides if current day Iraq is to be counted as a democracy then Turkey more than passes the test.

Cyprus was and is a divided state partially under Turkish occupation. So, the “no democracy ever went to war against another democracy” theorem still holds

Yes and when did the Turkish occupation begin? In the 1970s when two democracies (and NATO allies) went to war. Previously Cyprus had been a British colony and became an independent country in 1960.

aengus on September 19, 2008 at 8:54 PM

I would argue that the ‘Greek’ territory of Cyprus maintained a functioning democracy but the rest of the nation was under foreign occupation, with a civil war in border areas between Greek and Turkish Cypriots

You’re splitting hairs here. It was only officially ‘Greek’ in the minds of the Greeks who wanted badly to reclaim it. Civil war is too strong a term. No one talks about the civil war in Northern Ireland despite the massive and far worse civil disturbances that occurred contemporaneously. Ethnic disturbances yes – they were the build up to the war.

So, calling Cyprus a democracy is…….iffy

Ataturk is a typical 20th Century ‘First Leader” like Nkruhmah and Mobutu and many others, with a lot of sleight-of-hand regarding what his policies really are vs. what the regime says they are. To get foreign aid and foreign approval, they significantly over-state the existence of democracy in their nations

Mobutu was an out and out dictator. He once had all the criminals in the country rounded up and then had a fifth of them executed just to show who was “in charge”. Real savage tyranny. Not a fair comparison – at least not to the elected leaders who succeeded Ataturk.

We can agree to continue to disagree, but I ain’t gonna call Turkey a democracy–or Mexico, or Algeria, or Pakistan, or Malaysia………..

Current day Mexico is by the paltry standards of Bush and Blair a democracy in that they are able to transfer power from one party/leader to another without war or outside intervention. Algeria and Malaysia I know nothing about. Pakistan certainly is not – they jump from election to military dictatorship to election to military dictatorship.

aengus on September 19, 2008 at 9:15 PM

I was wondering how long you could resist bringing up the Six Counties, aengus. Are they a democracy?

Hahaha. Its quite complicated. NI is politically unified with Britain but has a separate government operating simultaneously. I’m not sure how it works exactly – I think you’d have to be a devoted lawyer to piece it all together. The system of government has changed so many times over the last few decades that its hard to keep track.

Mexico is an ‘authoritarian democracy’ rather than a ‘true democracy’ because one party has controlled the state since 1910. People can vote–and millions do, regularly–but it makes no difference: the same elite controls ‘who gets what’ with no real dissent tolerated beyond temporary demonstrations

That I did not know.

“True democracies” can be ‘one-party dominant’ democracies like………..Ireland, and India , where one party ( the party credited with gaining independence ) wins most elections but there is some meaningful turnover at the top and–more importantly–there are real limits on the power of government

That would seem to me to be a good definition.

However you haven’t demonstrated that this specifically applies to Turkey and/or Cyprus. Although I admit that I could not verify their status if you were to apply this level of scrutiny though I am reasonably sure that Turkey has a multi-party system.

There is no evidence that Iraq is a ‘true democracy’. If the Coalition troops completed their mission and pulled out would Nouri al-Maliki hold an election at the constitutional time and hand over power peacefully if he lost? None can say as of yet.

Everyone ever arrested or jailed in Mexico can tell you how that nation is not a democracy……..

Noe to self: don’t get arrested in Mexico.

aengus on September 19, 2008 at 9:42 PM

Toni Blair sounds like a small bundle of sticks.

Why would he go on that moronic show?

TheSitRep on September 19, 2008 at 10:57 PM

You mean he sounds gay?

aengus on September 19, 2008 at 11:03 PM