May be some of you never realize this, but what US is doing now in fighting terrorism actually harms the democracy in some other countries by endorsing autocratic regime to crack down oppositions in the name of fighting terrorism. Wheter real terrorists are arrested is not important as long as someone is arrested.

For example, my country Malaysia has a law called ISA (Internal Security Act) which allows the Prime Minister to arrest and detain anyone without a warrant or charge for up to 2 years (and can be extended to 8) in the name of national security, and there is nothing you can do about it. US had been complaining about these practice by Malaysian government for a very long time for detaining anyone who opposes the goverment policy. However, that complaining disappearsed after 9/11. The government saw this opportunity and step up the round up and arresting an unprecedented amount of opposition members, newspaper columnist and education activists by branding them 'terrorists'. Some of them may be fundamentalist but far away from Taliban. Some of them even preaches American style democracy.

Terrorist groups are unheard of in Malaysia for decades, but suddenly many citizens found hard to believe government's claim of all these people are terrorists. Terrorists don't just fall from sky. Why there is not such 'round up of terrorists' until recently?

Worse come worse, American goverment now actually praises Malaysian government's action. Malaysian Prime Minister even suggested US goverment (during his recent visit) to have something like ISA for US.

There are also discussion in US now about several Gulf states who had recently hold elections (or going too). These nations used to be ruled by pro-American monarchys which are ruthless. Recently, some of them are transitioning into constitutional monarchy system (like UK and Japan) and some 'scholars' and congress members in US worry about that. Obviously, they prefer to have undemocratic monarchys (which are certainly pro-American) in those nations instead of democratically elected goverment (who may not like American).

So, if democracy and freedom only for US, and the rest of the world doesn't deserved democracy and freedom?

What do you guys think?

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Well, I just think right now that we want to get the terrorists and that human rights has taken sort of a backseat, but it'll eventually get back to where we take a tough stance against Malaysia's and China's practices (which actually Bush said something about China using the war on terror just to crack down on Muslims, but it was just something minor and not reported in the news). Also, as for America getting an ISA, it won't happen b/c number 1, Malaysia doesn't have much weight on Ameican practices and stuff and 2, its unconstitutional.

So, right now, we're just trying to get the bad guys, but we're going to go back to our stances on human rights and stuff.

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