Word: dictatorship
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...quagmire into which the U.S. sank when it engaged in the internal affairs of Southeast Asia. But it's a bit much to take an example 30 years old as the sole guide to our actions today. There's an analogy much closer to hand. Iraq is a dictatorship with a centralized economy; it strictly controls access to the outside world; its people live in fear of thugs from the state security apparatus; and not least, it devotes much of its budget to secret military programs. All of that was true of the European communist nations during the cold...
...quagmire into which the U.S. sank when it engaged in the internal affairs of Southeast Asia. But it's a bit much to take an example 30 years old as the sole guide to our actions today. There's an analogy much closer to hand. Iraq is a dictatorship with a centralized economy; it strictly controls access to the outside world; its people live in fear of thugs from the state security apparatus; and not least, it devotes much of its budget to secret military programs. All of that was true of the European communist nations during the cold...
...stripes would make common cause against her out of fear that it marked the beginning of a return to the draconian methods of the Suharto days." Says Wolfowitz: "Americans need to understand we're dealing with a country that only recently became free after 50 years of dictatorship. Indonesians are leery about giving too much authority to the police." Whatever the causes, says Rohan Gunaratna, an expert on al-Qaeda at St. Andrews University in Scotland, Indonesia is "the only place in the world" where radicals linked to bin Laden "aren't being hunted down...
...crying for increased security, the government exploits the current climate of fear. By accusing its critics of being unconcerned with national security, the government deflects substantive evaluation of its policies. The plea for increased security at any cost is a dangerous one, raising the specter of a constitutional dictatorship. Open debate must be promoted, for in times of supreme emergency, if and when they arise, the mechanisms of deliberative democracy should not be discarded in favor of the unchecked consolidation of executive power. The only way to insure this is to provide an atmosphere of free inquiry...
...Indonesia's tolerance for troublemakers is rooted in its recently history, not in its culture. "The principal difference is not something indigenous to Indonesian culture, but something that grows out of the particular challenges of a struggling, young democracy that's emerged after 50 years of dictatorship, and that's unique in the region," the No. 2 official at the Pentagon says. "Singapore and Malaysia have very different political systems in which the balance is definitely struck on the side of security...