And then there were 25

All over the Spanish news today are “noticias” of something than should not go unrecognized in the news around the world.

WE TURNED 25!

Poland, The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, more and more!
The Europeanization of Europe has been in the works for some time now, but getting many of these former Soviet-Bloc counties this far and integrated – or on the verge of integration – is likely something my parents, and certainly my grandparents, would never have imagined for the majority of their lives.

But here’s the next step, and this time the stakes are much higher: Turkey is in the process of getting accepted into the UE pending the lowering of religious extremist activity in their county and the shoring up of their economy. While neither of these two steps are easy, they are quite “alcanzable.” More so, there are many achievable steps proper intervention/investment from the current Europe 25, the UN, and even the unilateral U.S. of A. that would bring Turkey well on its way to European eligibility.

Why is this so important? Thomas Friedman mentioned this about 5 months ago in a NYT piece. Turkey is the closet thing to a Muslim Democracy that exists. Right now, our (Wolfowitz’s) idea seems to be that democracy will come in the form of an explosion – a bomb of freedom, planted in the pillar of Iraq. But Turkey might represent a wet dream, not to explosionists like Wolfowitz, but for implosionists like (whoknows?). Bringing Turkey into the EU could spread the word of Democracy throughout the Muslim world. If this is indeed something that people are wanting and hoping for, perhaps even this investment (that costs zero lives) can go much further than the highly mortal war in Iraq.