Letter: U.S. not a role model for the Middle East

Friday, July 6, 2007 | 6:55 a.m.

What is a bad parent? One definition is a parent who demands a specific behavior, but fails to be a role model of that behavior. The parents' rules just won't be obeyed.

How about using this analogy with a nation that is trying to be a parent to another country? How about the strongest nation on the planet telling smaller nations in the Middle East to change their age-old ways and adopt a democratic form of government?

This premise is a promise that, in a democracy, there will be an end to the infighting , and government functions will run smoothly. How can this parental advice go unheeded? Well, the child, if he or she is over 6 years old, looks at the track record of the parent. Uh-oh .

Since the war began in Iraq, what has been the role model of the government in Washington, D.C.? We who are older than 6 recognize that the infighting in Washington has been counterproductive, and our role model for running a country is not the same as the one we read about in school when they signed the Constitution.

What is the message here? Perhaps, we Americans have a task of running our country as a government of, by and for the people before we can ask others to follow our example.

Ken Anderson, Las Vegas

Colonists wanted to be a democracy

Eileen Schenck's July 4 letter to the editor suggests that all we have to do is keep hanging on and pushing forward and we will eventually have a democracy in Iraq. The argument is that it took the colonists a long time to win freedom and establish the United States.

But there is a significant difference being overlooked here. The colonists were a united group that wanted democracy to establish a particular set of living conditions. The people in Iraq are having efforts at democracy thrown at them by outside forces. There are few parallels between the conditions of the colonists and the numerous warring factions in the Middle East; it's difficult to see that what worked here, 200 years ago, will necessarily work over there in these considerably different times.

And if the president and others truly deplore these conditions, and if we truly see a change in circumstances as imminent and pressing, then why are we not seriously questioning the absurd tactics by which we are going about this? Is this effort at democracy necessarily a long-term struggle, or are we simply dragging it out with minimal effort? I've asked before why we are not instituting a draft and throwing everything we have at this situation.

Isn't that part of this whole American spirit we seem to be so eager to establish in this area? Or is that simply political suicide? And is dragging out a war with minimal effort far more profitable in the long run than going in and getting it done now?

I'm all in favor of democracy, but idealism alone is not the means by which to accomplish it. If the Iraqis want this democracy as much as our Founding Fathers and the many colonists wanted theirs, then why are they fleeing in great numbers? Shouldn't they, too, be staying and fighting?

Timothy James, Las Vegas