"WHAT FOOLS WE WERE to allow ourselves to be lulled into a warm sense of security by the events of the late '80s and early '90s. How childlike we were in our trumpeting of the new age of peace, prosperity, and good will. Democracy had come to Europe, and that meant that peace had come to Europe, for democracies never made war on other democracies. | "What utter rot! "How could we have believed such naive rubbish with the lessons of history so plainly before us? Democracies have always made war on other democracies; it has a fact of life since the earliest democracies flourished in Greece, and warred continuously upon each other. "How could we have forgotten that in the War of 1812 the two great western democracies made enthusiastic, aggressive war on each other? "How could we have forgotten that democracies represent the will of the people, and that the will of the people is often for war? "How could we have forgotten that Hitler was elected?" --Janosz Skrivkin, Chancellor of Croatia, 1999
| |||||||||||||||