New York Times Friday

I took a look at the NYT editorial page today to look at Tom Friedman's article regading the war in Israel. However, what I got was a barrage of articles of which I had comments for each. But let's first look at Friedman's.

Ever since my conversion to libertarianism, I have started to distance myself from Tom Friedman's economics. However, his view towards the Middle East still lies deep in my heart. Today is no different.

In his piece entitled, "The Kidnapping of Democracy," he discusses the failure of democracy in three places, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. While he acknowledges the great strides the world has seen in Middle Eastern elections, he also looks at the problems that still exits:

But the roots of democracy are so shallow in these places and the moderate majorities so weak and intimidated that we are getting the worst of all worlds. We are getting Islamist parties who are elected to power, but who insist on maintaining their own private militias and refuse to assume all the responsibilities of a sovereign government. They refuse to let their governments have control over all weapons. They refuse to be accountable to international law (the Lebanese-Israeli border was ratified by the U.N.), and they refuse to submit to the principle that one party in the cabinet cannot drag a whole country into war.

While there are elections, there is no order and a tyranny of the minority is created AFTER the elections:

Boutros Harb, a Christian Lebanese parliamentarian, said: ''We must decide who has the right to make decisions on war and peace in Lebanon. Is that right reserved for the Lebanese people and its legal institutions, or is the choice in the hands of a small minority of Lebanese people?''

Ditto in the fledgling democracies of Palestine and Iraq. When cabinet ministers can maintain their own militias and act outside of state authority, said Mr. Ezrahi, you're left with a ''meaningless exercise'' in democracy/state building.

Friedman continues to acknowledge the fact that people within these countries don't stand up to these thugs because they will either be called "Infidel Backers" or killed.

However, this is where I start to disagree with my friend, Mr. Friedman. Personal responsibility should be brought into this discussion. We should not provide excuses for the failures of Arab countries around the Middle East. They must reign in the terrorists and thugs among them. If not, the victims of their attacks (Israelis) will be forced to (and should) attack back until these thugs are eliminated.

Tom Friedman ends with pondering whether the skeptics of democracy-promotion are correct:

It may be the skeptics are right: maybe democracy, while it is the most powerful form of legitimate government, simply can't be implemented everywhere. It certainly is never going to work in the Arab-Muslim world if the U.S. and Britain are alone in pushing it in Iraq, if Europe dithers on the fence, if the moderate Arabs cannot come together and make a fist, and if Islamist parties are allowed to sit in governments and be treated with respect -- while maintaining private armies.

The whole democracy experiment in the Arab-Muslim world is at stake here, and right now it's going up in smoke.

While I agree that democracy is at stake with these recent developments, skeptics of democracy-promotion are seriously misguided. While democracy will be hard in the Middle East, it must be promoted. Promoting dictators never worked very well for the United States anyway.