Is Democracy on the March–Or Wild, Out-of-Control Revolution?
Patrick Buchanan, at WorldNetDaily.com (2-7-05): Following the attempted assassination of Israel’s ambassador in London in 1982, Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon to eradicate the PLO nest of Yasser Arafat, who was then holed up in Beirut. Mission accomplished. The Israelis triumphed. Arafat and his PLO were expelled to Tunis. But that was not the end of it. In occupied Lebanon, an unanticipated Shia insurgency, Hezbollah, arose, bled the Israeli army for years and eventually expelled it in 2000. “We let the Shia genie out of the bottle,” said a rueful Yitzhak Rabin. After 9-11, an impatient George Bush decided to solve his Iraq problem by invading the country and ousting Saddam and the Baathists. Mission accomplished in three weeks. Bush triumphed. But our invasion, too, gave birth to an unanticipated insurgency that has now cost us 12,000 U.S. dead and wounded, and $200 billion, with no end in sight. We, too, let a genie out of the bottle. But, whether one opposed this
