Boris Yeltsin Dies...

Boris Yeltsin's passing is a sad but all too true reality of what happens when someone mistakenly forces changes that a country is not ready to handle.

He was the face of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s and most certainly one of the most curious figures in world history. Yeltsin was a former ally of Mikhail Gorbachev but had a falling out with him and eventually ended up being elected to Russian Parliament and quitting the Communist Party. He led a coup that overthrew the Communist Government and then preceded to lead the country into decline.

Gorbachev was a much more cautious leader who was leading the Soviet Union to a much more free state but doing it in slower steps. Yeltsin who led the coup out of his own impatience, later made poor decisions that would bring the country to the brink of economic ruin. He used force to deal with conflicts much the same way his Communist predecessors had and he became completely inactive during the latter part of his Presidency. He would later name Vladimir Putin his handpicked successor and many believe Putin's disdain for the freedom of press and speech has made the state very communistic in rule once again.

There are certainly examples here we could follow. As appealing as freedom seems to all people, cautious approaches are needed. To just go in and overthrow a government can create complete and utter chaos if an alternate, well reasoned plan isn't instantly ready to be inserted in the place of the ruling party's policies. Not that revolutions are a bad thing, as the American Revolution proves, but we had some brilliant people working on the next government to be put in place and sadly Yeltsin and company did not.

As it applies to us, Bush led the charge to overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq but had no plan beyond that. Several Iraqi constitutions were scrapped before the one tenuously in place currently was accepted. The Iraqi parliament has been unstable at best and a joke at worst. The Iraqi economy hinges on oil in which the major groups in Iraq have not agreed to share and evenly distribute profits from, not to mention we seem to want a take from this.

Sometimes even though democracy sounds terrific to countries in a dictator-led state, it must be achieved through the free will of the people and not by force of an outside party. It must be planned for in economical, environmental and regional political terms, not just for appearance only.

Russia is just starting to recover from many years of mismanagement based on an impatient leader's coup to force a new democracy. In it's wake is a very similar government as the one overthrown.

We face a similar reality in Iraq.

Freedom is not a slogan, it is a well reasoned state of the people with well reasoned solutions to prevent collapse.

Rp