| Mr Khan said: Iraq's case was unique where they tore down all existing social structures (as part of the purge of the Baath party from public life, but you had to be in the Baath party to be anyone of consequence). You can bust a totalitarian regime from the top without having to tear through social structures, and that's largely what happened in Egypt, though support came from the bottom, things are 80% the same as they were before, the large difference being the absence of Mubarak, but the government wasn't decimated in place. Revolution is a tricky thing, you either have to work with the old regime, or be prepared to either totally replace it or face anarchy |
What happens in a viable revolution, with sufficient numbers working together to oppose the standing dictator, is that, when they get in power, they have a framework to end up governing. This happened in the United States, when it rebelled against Britain. It even withstood a constitutional crisis early. The citizens were ready to govern and run things. In a dictatorship, the dictator can end up undermining things so much, that it is hard for them to work together. Or, usually a dictator will arise when a nation is not able to govern itself locally, and breaks down into factional infighting, which is definitely the hallmark of Iraq, and even Afghanistan to some degree.
On the point I ended up alluding to in another thread, if the citizens are not able to govern themselves, and deal with their own problems and produce a large number of negative externalities (polution, crime, disease, poverty), then the citizens will end up demanding something of government, and thus you end up with government intervening. So, on this end, I had addressed the Libertarians who go, "Just get rid of government and things will be fine". Well, nope, not really. People need to take charge first, then you can eliminate government.
