Tony Blair... And A Question Of Democracy

On September 18, 2008, Iraq war critic Jon Stewart had Iraq war perpetrator Tony Blair on his show for a little chit-chat. It wasn't one of Stewart's best shows but there was a Tony Blair quote that came out of it that become part of the collective unconscious.

Jon Stewart: [Bush] believes, if everybody was a democracy, there'd be no more fighting.

Tony Blair: Well, no two democracies have gone to war against each other.

Jon Stewart: But here is my wonder-- if we were all democracies, wouldn't we come up with some reason to fight each other?

Tony Blair: Well, it may always be reasons-- but actually, as a matter of history, no two democracies have fought each other. but lots of people aren't democratic, or free.

Blair, ardent convert to the Neocon faith even before he converted to the Papal one, was stating it as an excuse for bombing Iraq into democracy, something that doesn't seem to have worked out so well. But it brings up a bigger question we can think about on this lovely Sunday afternoon. Is a country with a permanent ruling elite and with an omnipotent Military-Industrial Complex and a corporately-controlled mass media, a country no less, where elections are routinely "fixed," and that provides structural anti-democratic safeguards against "hot-headed mobs"... well is that a democracy? Can any aggressive, warlike country be a democracy?