Posted on 12/09/2006 3:39:22 PM PST by shrinkermd
....The demise of the edifice of Soviet communism in the early 1990s led to a conceptual swing in Arab societies. Not only was the West restored to its post-World War I status as an unrivaled military and economic force in the Middle East, but so, too, did liberal democracy revert to what it was at the beginning of the century in the region: A form of government with universal pretensions.
The significance of these developments was not lost on many Arab intellectuals. At the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, discussions on the universality of liberal democracy proliferated in Arab countries. Some intellectuals even dared to state openly that in the post-Soviet world, Arab countries must also go the way of liberal democracies, since the fall of communism had provided definitive proof that there are no grounds for the Arab regimes’ pretense to being a link between “social democracy” (an equal social order) and “political democracy,” in the same way that there are no grounds for the pretense of delaying democratic reforms in the name of creating “true” democracy. These intellectuals insisted that the type of democracy practiced in the West is the only type worth practicing, and is furthermore a condition for becoming an advanced and free country. Despite bitter past experience, they demanded that the Western model of democracy be adopted in Arab countries, with no excuses, and without delay.10
...Yet, despite its weaknesses, the debate among reformist intellectuals on the question of the universality of liberal democracy posed a new challenge to the political order in the Middle East. Some of these thinkers linked the collapse of the Soviet bloc to the failure of the Arab regimes’ political rhetoric, and concluded that these regimes were destined to follow ignominiously in communism’s footsteps. Moreover, these reformist thinkers translated America’s triumphalist stance into Arab terms: Like Francis Fukuyama, they, too, asked Arabs to view liberal democracy as a system of government suitable to all of humanity, and entreated them to ignore its Western roots. And like Fukuyama, they also assumed that with the collapse of communism, the last serious ideological alternative to liberal democracy had vanished.
The re-awakening of the idea of liberalism in the Arab world was short-lived, however, for in the summer of 1990, everything changed. In August, Iraq invaded Kuwait and the United States assembled an international coalition on Saudi soil to counter Saddam Hussein’s aggression. In Hussein’s rapid defeat, the Arabs witnessed the total military superiority of the West over their region’s strongest army.
In the eyes of many Arab intellectuals-among them even those who had been calling for political reform in the Arab world-the Gulf War served as a warning of the dangers the post-Soviet future posed to their nations and culture. Not merely a confrontation between countries, but rather the beginning of a wholesale clash of two civilizations, a struggle whose true cause is the desire of the West to quash Arab power and eradicate the very possibility of the existence of an opposing force.
Arab thinking about the war, then, ran toward an anxiety that the West would once again seek to impose its interests and values on the Arab nations, just as it had done after World War I. Thus did many Arab intellectuals infer the objective of the Gulf War from its outcome: Since the war had ended in a hard blow to the Arab state with the strongest army and an enlargement of the Western military presence in the Arab state richest in oil, then that must have been its purpose from the start. Many went so far as to describe the war as a Western conspiracy whose true goal was the realization of the vision outlined by President George Bush, Sr. of a “new world order” defined as global American hegemony and the return of the Middle East to Western-imperialistic rule...12
Also, gives the Arab take on Bush I's "New World Order" that has bedeviled our foreign policy considerations among conservatives as well as Arabs ever since.
"...Opponents of the war in Iraq who call for an admission of failure and retreat perpetuate the concept of Arab “uniqueness,” or the idea that there is something inherent in Arab societies that requires both their inhabitants and the West to accept the illiberal character of their regimes. Yet if they insist on resigning themselves to an anti-democratic, “Islamic civilization,” what do they make of the fact that Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, has had a stable democracy since 1998, in which multiple Islamic parties participate?28 Often these are the same people who point to the lack of a successful democratic tradition in Arab countries, yet ignore the fact that other countries with an authoritarian heritage, such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, have nonetheless adopted the democratic form of government with great success. So, too, do they ignore the fact that when Arab societies in different periods were granted the opportunity to participate in free elections, they embraced them. Finally, they may point to the economic hardship suffered by some Arab countries as the reason for democracy’s failure to thrive on their soil, although democratic regimes have risen to power in poor countries just as often as in wealthy ones. In sum, since the global democratic revolution began several decades ago, it has crossed cultures, religions, and economies. If there is one lesson that scholars of democracy have learned, it is that the primary conditions for this form of regime to prosper are external incentives and an internal elite determined to make it work.
President Bush was right, therefore, when he stated that there is nothing unique in the Arab world that prevents it from becoming democratic. He was also right when he insisted that there is no reason why Arab countries should be any different from Japan and Germany, the Latin American republics, the countries of the former Soviet bloc, and the tigers of Southeast Asia, most of whom exchanged tyranny for democracy. His mistake lies in ignoring one phenomenon that is unique to the Arab world-the dominance of a mindset that combines a desire for democracy with a genuine, cross-party fear of Western intentions.29 It is possible that to untangle this Gordian knot, America must persist in wielding its sword. Yet the sword alone will never be enough.
"The Road to Democracy in the Arab World" is probably a dead end.
bookmark
I think it might have something to do with Arabs having an inferiority complex. Their nations have been largely a flop economically and socially, and examples of far greater success are nearby. That suggests deep in their psyche the failure of Islam, as they practice it, among other things. Just a wild guess. I don't pretend to really know.
One thing left out in the article regarding Germany and Japan: Neither one of those countries willingly turned to democracy. They were beat down into total and absolute submission. Western powers killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese and German civilians--innocent and otherwise--mostly otherwise. They would have kept going, too. This was clear to all. It was complete and total ruthlessness on the part of the west that created democracies in Japan and Germany, bottom line.
In the absense of that sort of ruthlessness, the dictators, thugs, religous zealots, and band of second-grade dropout warriors that exist in the middle east will never get the message. In fact, as we play timid, they are getting the opposite message. Many people in Iraq should be living in trembling fear of our forces -- for at least a few months--now, they talk pot shots at them and go home and luaugh.
One of these days, a nuclear bomb will go off somewhere...pick your city....and the west will finally show its fangs and the ruthless killing will begin in earnest. In the end, will it be the Middle East that gets the message of democracy or will it be the Democracies that get the message of religous law? We're so weak and pathtic right now--my god Nanci Pelosi just got elected--I like the chances for Islam to spread to the west.
Just an opinion.
Unfortunately 9/11 wasn't enough to fully wake the sleeping giant. The time will come though, unfortunately for all involved.
LOL!
They are very afraid that their culture will be overcome by Western culture if they don't do something.
Agreed. The Anglos-Saxons are slow to anger, but ruthless when pushed that little bit too far.
The Kurds went through a civil war & established a democratic form of government in their territories, while they were under the Hussein Iraqi government.
Excellent opinion on your part, great! I agree, we have to beat the arabs down into total and absolute submission. And like you say, we won't start along that path until we have a huge tragedy in our midst.
Well, it is a derivative of George Bernard Shaw's "we would already have the socialism, but for the socialists". Credit for the logical construction of the joke goes to him.
It is not a culture, but a dunghill. And the sooner it is cleared out, the better.
I would agree with all the naysayers that the Arab world is unfit for representative government were it not for the following facts.
Indonesia is a huge Muslim country with a western style government for these past eight years.
Tremendous voter participation in the Iraqi elections, during a war should make every lazy American ashamed.
Yes, look how well that worked with the Germans in WWI. Then Hitler came along and made them feel good about themselves and everyone lived happily ever after. /sarc>
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