democracy now

Bloggers on the left and the right seem to regard Nicolas Kristof as some kind of crusading loony with nothing of much relevance to say. They couldn’t be more wrong. He has been the only major pundit I’m aware of regularly writing about the atrocities in Darfur. And now he calls out President Bush on the hypocrisy of supporting one tyrant in the middle east in order to depose another. While I realize that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the world can’t be democratized overnight, I think it’s clear to everyone that the administration is more concerned with making Americans safer than with spreading democracy. It’s a shame that under our current policies, the former has to come at the expense of the latter. Transparent power plays cloaked in the guise of democracy dissemination, even if driven by the laudable intent of protecting Americans, can only engender support for those who want to harm us. Matching action with rhetoric and making democracy the first priority will make everyone safer—rural Pakistani women included. President Bush: support the people of the Middle East, not the power.