Today I was talking to one of my American friend about Iraq War...She said that many Americans were against the war and it was bush who went ahead. They now want him to be treated as a war criminal...
She also agrees that the war was basically about oil.
This raised few question in my mind....
If Bush and his cabinet can go ahead with war without the willingness of people and even override congress, then what is the difference between democracy and dictatorship. Can Bush be compared to Robert Mugabe or Saddam Hussain?
He also made some changes in the constitution some of which are
(1) a doctrine of preemptive war,
(2) new surveillance techniques, including domestic surveillance,
(3) a new system of preventive detention, including detention of American citizens without access to courts,
(4) the creation of legal black holes like Guantanamo Bay and CIA black sites,
(5) use of torture and torture-lite to obtain information,
(6) enhanced secrecy and classification policies, and
(7)
a version of unitary executive theory that claimed that Congress could
not constitutionally limit the President when he claimed to act under
his powers as Commander-in-Chief. The last idea was also articulated in

(8) the expansion of the use of constitutional signing
statements, in which the President would state that he would disregard
certain features of laws passed by Congress without telling the public
any details about the scope or extent of his non-enforcement.

After these changes I could hardly find any difference between a Dictator and "The American President" except that "The President of the World's Oldest Democracy" is the most powerful man and decision to go against him may be catastrophic.
A very good example is when few European countries, mainly France, dared to oppose US before invasion of Iraq. They definitely could not stop the war but.....
After few months the countries realised the mistake and left no stone unturned to please the "The Democratically Elected President of the World's Oldest Democracy"

Can we still say that Democracy is of the people, for the people and by the people.....
Can we still say democracy is the best way of governance...

It can be argued that in Democracy you can change the government after a certain period of time, if it is so....
How can Bush get elected twice if many American are against him....
How in some other countries the same person continues to get elected year after year....
Why there are allegation of rigging in elections....

In case of democracy the biggest group (in terms of population and may be money) selects the government and manages the complete show....
In case of other dictatorship, communist and other similar forms of government this managing group is much smaller....
So can Democracy be seen as the initial stage of dictatorship? (the group goes on becoming smaller)
Is there any way to maintain democracy in the form as it is defined in books?
or we have to go by the old saying "Might is Right" or "Jiski Lathi Uski Bhais"