Ok... I noticed that you and Bofin went ahead of me... but I want to answer you and then I'll see if I want to meddle in what you and him are debating...

Let's by all means talk about democracy... it is a worthy discussion and a very interesting one... Intel for one will be glad to jump in if he sees it and feels like it...

Ok.. not all majority decisions are democratic... but that is not to say a decision about genocide can never be democratic... which is what you are defending right?

I'll skip over your personal opinion except to say that to me as well democracy SHOULD be based in a lower level (ergo more basical and important) of human rights.

But to say that this should be so says nothing about those values, or morals. Democracy... whatever Dahl or anyone else may want to redefine it as... is rule of the people... the people can rule many unreasonable, even immoral and illegal decisions... like genocide.

I'm afraid that your defining of democracy to encompass necessarily our, western, moral values is not intelectually correct.
I know it is my personal opinion... but I like to separate democracy... which is a political system... from the underlying moral principles... which are something else.
So democracies can be imoral and dictatorships can be moral... it's not clear cut to me...
Also I don't really know about the academia position... but I think the historical meaning, and common interpretation of democracy favors my position.

But maybe not... we can make a poll of the hoxdudians perhaps?

Now you then also extrapolate a national political system to an international context... something that I could only wish was that simple...

You equating a pre-emptive war with a war of agression is also quite a stretch... if they were the same maybe the name would be the same? (but I repeat... Iraq was punitive)

A war can be undemocratic only so far as one of the countries waging it undemocraticaly declared it... ergo it is undemocratic on a national level... be it, just, premptive or punitive...

The fact that international law would be broken by a war of agression, and Iraq was not an example in my view, says nothing about the democratic nature of said war. International law is certainly not the result of some global democracy... you may want to see the UN council as a representation of global democracy but I think it is a very far cry from that... and in fact the laws pertaining to conflict pre-date the UN...

I think you're just mixing up a whole lot of things that need to be separated so that the nuances of who is right or wrong in Iraq , etc... are visible...

Shall we clarify further our different opinions and hone them so that we then try to demolish the other's? Or just agree to disagree?
Frankly I'd prefer the first... :)

PS: I see that I hardly defined democracy... for my purposes a sort of common sense interpretation was sufficient to clarify the differences I see regarding your opinion...