Does The UN Not Study Its Own History?

A UN envoy in Iraq has agreed in principal with a Shi'ite Ayatollah that Iraq should suffer direct elections, altough he did indicate that conditions must be right.

Has he not looked at the General Assembly to see how a direct democracy functions - or more correctly, fails to? Has he not seen the injustices that eminate from that august body? Does he not realize that replacing Saddam with a direct democracy is simply replacing one big tyrant with many little ones?

On anything outside of small, local issues, a direct democracy is a recipe for failure. The US government would most certainly fail if we were to change from a Republic to a direct democracy. Technically, it is feasible. But we would lose sight of our ideals. The tyranny of the majority would ignore the lofty goals set by the Founding Fathers in an effort to satisfy an immediate desire. For anyone not in the majority - which will be everyone given the breadth of issues facing us today - life in a direct democracy would be every bit as oppressive as life in Castro's Cuba or the theothugs Iran.

The Greeks proved the ineffectiveness of a direct democracy over 2000 years ago. The UN General Assembly is consistently reinforcing many of the downfalls of direct democracy - most notably the oppression of the minority by the majority. For a UN envoy to be nearly totally ignorant of those lessons is appalling.

If we want Iraq to become a more tolerant society, with protections for minorities similar to what we have in the US, we need to stick to our plan to introduce the Iraqi people to a republican form of government.

Otherwise, we are just reloading the powder keg.