Isolationist libertarianism is a particularly American brand and trusting elections to prevent civil wars seems to be a British one. Both have their strong points but there are occasions where both are plain wrong.
I wrote (and deleted) a few hundred words on the history of Algerian massacres which go back to the mid-nineteenth century, and have a strong (under-reported) underpinning of ethnic hatred. That and the fact that the Iranian revolution didn’t have the option of elections is part of the reason I don’t think that the comparison is fair on the Algerian Army.
Even with the benefit of hindsight I find it difficult to see how the armed forces of Algeria could have calculated that the FIS wouldn’t be worse than their Iranian counterparts (I recall that Ayatollah Khomeni had only recently died at the time). The Army had no way of knowing what we know of Iran today.
Sorry, can’t locate the Milton Friedman quote, however, for a model example of the justified military coup, see the later stages of series two of Babylon 5. I believe it’s available on DVD. If I buy one of those machines soon, the whole series will be on my first round of shopping.
