Democracy and personal safety

I hope I can do this justice, so please bear with me.

One of the dinner conversations I had while in California was with a young, articulate, educated gentleman from Singapore. He strongly disagreed with the war in Iraq, and based his position on the premise that "democracy isn't all it's cracked up to be".

His position was that the Iraqi people don't "feel safe" under the current environment (which would be understandable), and that they lived in a much safer environment under Saddams rule. He believed that under Saddam, as long as they didn't disparage their leader in any way, they were safe from any harm. But with a democratic government, they were constantly fearful of terrorism.

He used Indonesia (where he was born and raised) as his justification for this. Basically, he said that when "democracy" came to Indonesia, all hell broke loose, and many people fled the country for fear of their lifes (refugees). He cited the current terrorism problems as a "democracy" problem, but if a dictatorship existed, this problem would not exist.

I asked him that, if this were true, where are all the refugees leaving Iraq? He said there are "millions" of refugees pouring out of Iraq because of the terrorism. I challenged him on this, although the only information I have is that people leaving Iraq has dramatically declined in the last few months (I don't have the source for this handy). He came back with "yeah, well the wealthy are leaving" (no evidence, tho). If this is true, is that because they CAN leave....now? And with Saddam, they couldn't? This ended the conversation.

Ironically, he lives in Singapore, which seems to be a shining example of a democratic republic, with a strong free-trade economy, and a strong court system, and an establish congressional-type system. Although I am certainly not an expert on Singapore or Indonesia (or Iraq for that matter), I would think that if he really believed in his theories, he would live in a dictatorship-ruled country for his own safety sake.