Having a democratically elected government is pretty meaningless, even for us. We have a democratically elected government, the Tories having received 36%of the vote. This has resulted in the deliberate, ideological destruction of the public sector, deliberate suppression of the working classes (and middle classes) with continual reduction of earnings (whilst the rich get richer), savage attacks on the vulnerable in our society, blatant pandering to big businesses, ,the financial institutions and bankers, accelerated selling off of OUR assets, unhealthy close relationships with the press and some extremely dodgy party donors, cash for honours, cash for lobbying and in my opinion,rampant corruption between politicians and businesses etc behind the scenes, on a par with many third world countries . Isn't democracy wonderful?
A democratically elected government also took us into illegal wars, wasted hundreds of military lives on campaigns in Afghanistan etc. What thanks did our lads and lasses get? largely, redundancy.The " Man on the Clapham Omnibus "could have told you that as soon as we went in, terrorist training would be moved elsewhere, and that as soon as we left, the Taliban would move back in. We have left a trail of death and destruction across the middle east because our democratically elected government (of all stripes) have their own agendas and lack the foresight or the intellect to realise the consequences of their actions. We are still complicit in the cowardly practice of air strikes from drones, in which thousands of civilians have been, and are still being killed. They are allowed to fire their missiles based on "profiles" of individuals or groups they are watching from thousands of feet up. So a community meeting is assumed to be a terrorist meeting and they are blown to pieces. It is criminal and no wonder the West is universally hated in many regions. How many of the people affected by this slaughter will turn to terrorism? The only people to benefit from our democratically elected government are themselves, the rich, bankers, the arms manufacturers and makers of prosthetic limbs.
So what is democracy and what is a terrorist? When Russia invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban were freedom fighters, supported and armed by the CIA, now they are terrorists. In the 1970's Sinn Fein were terrorists, now they are politicians.To call this a struggle between a democracy and terrorists is too simplistic and is also pointless. I feel for both sides and cannot imagine what their lives must be like.