Democracy is nothing to do with peace, which has been evident from history. Democracy has a tendency towards peace, but that has nothing to do with its function, purpose or method.
Democracy tends towards peace because the majority of people tend to not want war. They prefer economic growth, stability and a better life. So when economics, democracy and cultural exports fail to achieve the expected result with a given competitor, the people are generally go towards a bloody and devastating war.
If democracy sustains, it render enormous benefits like its doing in USA, UK and other countries of the West, but when it fails it screws the natives like its doing in India. In Pakistan, after every 10 or so years, our godfathers in America renew their efforts to implement a fresh version of democracy with the same old people and after failing miserably for some months revert back to their more familiar turf of dictatorship.
When our own President General (Retd.) Pervez Musharraf says that Pakistan is not fit for a pure form of democracy and only his version of democracy which primarily stems from the citadel of GHQ is apt for this country, then you come to realize the core of mindset of all the dictators starting from Ayub Khan, going through in the way Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Zia-ul-Haq and currently at Musharraf.
The premises that a pure democracy would be a free pass for the extremists to happily grab the national throne and press the ‘go’ button of nukes is totally rubbish and it could be a plot of a Hollywood movie, but nothing else. Or it could earn some applause to a think tank in a shabby cubicle of Pentagon, or it could earn some 3-minute shine to someone in New York Times.
Extremists are handful, and they cannot even win the votes of their locality let alone the national elections. Even the religious parties, which are not extremists don’t enjoy much support right now in the country, due to their pro-dictatorship and anti-democracy stances in the previous years and back in history.
Religious parties, historically, have never won any considerable amount of seats in the national and provincial legislature. Although they did win seats in the NWFP (the province adjacent to Afghanistan in the North) in the last elections, but that too was because of the parties’ stance on politics and issues, especially because of the reactionary sentiments that existed in the region because of the close social, political, and cultural ties with Afghanistan. Of course, these would have some support in these elections, in those parts again, but they cannot, cannot, take control of a democratically elected government. The most popular parties in Pakistan (PPP, PML) are strictly non-religious.
So pipe down, you morons who are writing opinions in the prestigious newspapers like NYT, Guardian, IHT.
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