Conservative Moral Relativity

Just a reminder--Let's raise the Minimum Wage!
Now onto foreign relations. The crisis with Syria demonstrates the true hypocrisy of conservatives. I would like to point out that many conservatives complain of liberal moral relativity, and then engage in it themselves. The whole "Jeff Gannon" controversy is another perfect example. FOX News defends the White House allowing a male prostitute to masquerade as a correspondent, and in the same breath condemns liberal moral relativity, while Rupert Murdoch makes millions by selling us smut on regular (or classic) FOX. Then we have Ari Fleischer's lame excuse, that he believed the name "GOPnews.com" was just a marketing device. In fact, this whole interview with Terry Gross is full of lame excuses for bad behavior and even more lame criticism of the "liberal media." Just go to www.mediamatters.org to see how transparent all of this is.
Anyways, back to Syria, which invaded Lebanon to prevent Israeli "terrorism" and an actual incursion into their territory. They have brought a certain amount of stability to a country which Ariel Sharon is actually almost single-handedly responsible for destabilizing. Now George W. talks about bringing democracy to Lebanon, which has actually had democracy for the past few decades, just under the heavy influence of Assad. In fact, is this not what we want to happen in Iraq. Don't we want the Iraqis to have a democracy in which they vote for pro-American candidates, and invite our troops to stay for the next three decades?
Criticizing the abuses of Syria's secret service may be fair, but it is pretty darn self-righteous in face of our own widespread prisoner abuse problem. Also, outsourcing torture is morally equivalent to doing it ourselves. I don't think Nike would ever claim that the shoes made on their behalf in Southeast Asian sweatshops are not Nike shoes.
In fact, the whole idea that somehow, Western culture is more able to handle nuclear technology than brownskinned people with funny accents is a little disturbing. Also, the idea that democracy brings stability is ridiculous. There are plenty of countries that have had elections with little peace to show for it. If democracy is the answer, then why don't we open up Pakistan to immediate elections, and watch what happens when the Islamist parties get control of a nuclear bomb. The fact of the matter is, sometimes other countries have less or more control over their society, and sometimes democracy makes things worse rather than better.
The problem with neo-conservatives is the assumption that America is right all the time, and that our point of view should be forced onto other countries with radically different histories and different values. "My country, right or wrong," has now become, "my country is never wrong."
Now, I do have to give Bush some credit, especially for the limited elections in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but we have threatened neither of these countries with invasion. So why couldn't we have used diplomatic pressure to spread democracy in our allies, and not claim that invading a country and occupying it spreads democracy when we do it, but hinders democracy when other people do it, even if that country had something of a democracy.
Or for instance, let's take conservative hand-wringing over Rwanda. Sure, that was bad, and Clinton should've done something about it. However, I did not see a groundswell of support in the Republican-controlled congress to send in the marines. Now that we are faced with another crisis in the Sudan, our invasion of Iraq has made it virtually impossible for us to have any moral high ground from which to authorize the sending of troops.
In fact, the Bush doctrine, although it may have had limited success in spreading democracy in the Middle East, has failed in its major premise--that the United States, by ourselves, can invade autocratic countries around the world and build stable democracies there. Even if Iraq becomes a stable democracy, the sheer moentary cost of the war is going to make any Republican balk in the future. The sheer cost in lost and damaged human lives should make anyone balk, especially the tremendous number of Iraqi lives lost.
Finally, if George W. Bush was so happy for Yushenko to get a recount in the Ukraine, why did he fight so vociferously against one in Florida?
Raise the Minimum Wage!