Re: Napoleon in Spain
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This is one of the worst analogies I've ever seen. You think Napoleon was offering democracy? Napoleon?? Emperor Napoleon the ruthless warlord who overthrew the First Republic in France??? Yeah, those provincial Spanish, can't even recognize a liberator when they see one.
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I'm sorry but that's the record for ya. Dispute it if you want but there it is, staring at you.
Let me briefly elaborate: Napoleon was offering to the Spaniards something like an "enlightened monarchy", with his brother at the throne. That kind of monarchy would have been extremely better than the regime that Spaniards had known until then. As Luttwak points out (and as is well known), Spain was ruled feudally with almost all the peasants leading lives of misery, the likes of which one could see perhaps only also in Russia. Napoleon was not offering a parliamentary republic, but one would think that the Spaniards would jump at the opportunity to adopt the improvements offered by the French emperor through their French-imposed "king" Joseph -- and then take it from there.
But, no. The Spaniards, in 1808, chose instead to take up arms against the invader, in order to be able to decide their country's affairs on their own. They chose guerilla warfare, aka insurgency.
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