Re: Does being democratically elected make a difference?

Christopher Chase wrote:

> If I am incorrect, then please provide me with your argument that his democratic
> election makes a difference.

I agree that, say, the U.S. government includes elected officials, and that this
would not have been an argument against someone who called on Cuba to bomb American
cities in order to stop the US's genocidal war against the Vietnamese in the 60's
and 70's. (I use the term "genocidal" in its new, liberal-militarist sense, meaning
any government policy that leads to the killing of at least 2,000 people.) That's
not to say that I would have agreed with their argument, but only that elections
aren't the criterion.

Moreover, I also agree that the issue is not what sort of government the Yugoslavian
state has. After all, the Canadian state has elections too, and I would be happy to
see its forcible overthrow. But one of the reasons I think the Canadian state
should be overthrown is that it is currently participating in militarist and
imperialist activities, including but not limited to the war in the Balkans. I
would also like to see the Yugoslav state overthrown. But I don't want either state
to be overthrown by NATO. That's like Hitler overthrowing Mussolini. I hope the
Serbian (Yugoslav) state wins the war, and Canada/USA/Germany/... loses the war,
because that would be a major setback for the liberal-militarist agenda being so
widely embraced by many on this list and elsewhere. Humanitarian militarism, at
least as old as the Crusades, has never been a force for good, and it has already
magnified the catastrophe in the Balkans immeasurably. I am doing what I can to
help defeat it and I urge others to do the same.

> Incidentally, I did a search on several news websites, including ABCNEWS.COM
> and MSNBC.COM for this rampant abuse of the term "dictator."
> I failed to find even one news or opinion article that used the words
> "dictator," and "Milosevic" in the same article at all. All the articles I
> could find call him either "President," "Yugoslav President," or simply
> "Slobodan Milosevic."

I don't know how you're searching, but try <http://www.google.com>, and enter the
words <milosevic dictator>. When I did this, I received "At least 3267 matches for
milosevic dictator....Search took 0.96 seconds."



Partial thread listing: