Posted on 12/06/2003 9:46:11 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Anyone who has listened to President Bush's recent speeches about the need to promote democracy in the Arab-Muslim world can't but walk away both impressed and dubious — impressed because promoting democracy in the Arab world is something no president before has advocated with Mr. Bush's vigor, and dubious because this sort of nation-building is precisely what Mr. Bush spurned throughout his campaign. Where did Mr. Bush's passion for making the Arab world safe for democracy come from? Though the president mentioned this theme before the war, it was not something he stressed with the public, Congress or the U.N. in justifying an Iraq invasion. Rather, he relied primarily on the urgent need to pre-emptively strip Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. A cynic might say that Mr. Bush was always interested only in stripping Iraq of its W.M.D. But with no W.M.D. having been unearthed thus far in Iraq, and with the costs of the war in lives and dollars soaring, the president felt he needed a new rationale. And so he focused on the democratization argument. But there is another explanation, one that is not incompatible with the first but is less overtly cynical. It is a story about war and events and how they can transform a president. "It often happens," argues Michael Sandel, the Harvard political theorist, "that presidents, under the pressure of events, especially during war, find themselves needing to articulate new and more persuasive rationales for their policies — especially when great sacrifices are involved. This happened to Lincoln during the Civil War. At the outset, the purpose of the Civil War for Lincoln was to oppose secession and preserve the Union. It was really only after the battle at Gettysburg that Lincoln articulated a larger purpose for the Civil War — namely freedom and the elimination of slavery. Henceforth, the Civil War was not only to preserve the Union, but to bring about the promise of the Declaration of Independence — written four score and seven years earlier." As Lincoln insisted in his Gettysburg Address (while dedicating the cemetery at Gettysburg), "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom." In Lincoln's case the rationale for the war shifted, not because he couldn't find any W.M.D. in Dixie, but rather, argues Mr. Sandel, "because of the enormity of the sacrifice that the war was requiring. It no longer made moral sense that this great sacrifice could just be about keeping these states together, could just be about a political structure. It had to be about a bigger purpose and that was freedom and equality." Woodrow Wilson went through a similar transformation, notes Mr. Sandel. He campaigned for re-election in 1916 boasting of having kept the country out of Europe's messy war. But by April 2, 1917, Mr. Wilson was standing before a joint session of Congress, seeking a declaration of war against Germany and insisting that the world "must be made safe for democracy." The irony, notes Mr. Sandel, is that Mr. Bush's decision to emphasize the democracy rationale puts him in the company of Wilson, the president who made liberal internationalism the core of his foreign policy. "Indeed," he adds, "President Bush, who campaigned for the presidency as an ardent realist, scorning nation-building and idealism in foreign policy, is now quoting President Wilson and speaking about the need to make the Middle East safe for democracy. It shows how the burden of the office and the power of events can transform presidents." Personally, I'm partial to Mr. Bush's new emphasis on the freedom and democracy argument, which for me was the only compelling rationale for the Iraq war. The question is how deeply Mr. Bush has internalized this democracy agenda, which is going to be a long, costly enterprise, and to what extent he can persuade Americans to stick with it. If you listen to him speak about it, it seems heartfelt, almost a religious conviction. But the fact is, Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address himself. Mr. Bush's democracy speeches were written for him. Only the future will tell us whether his attachment to this issue is the product of epiphany or expediency — or both. In my Nov. 30 column, I wrote about standing on a sidewalk in London and watching with dismay the protest parade go by — focused entirely on Tony Blair and George Bush, with no signs or chants mentioning the atrocities perpetrated by Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein — or even the murderous bombing in Istanbul that day. Readers wrote that at the public rally following the march, some speakers did decry the events in Istanbul. I'm glad to hear it.
Funny how now it's just a transformation from the cost of the war in Iraq, not 9/11, or a previously held belief.
Friedman's an ass. Another liberal jerk unwilling to accept the new state of affairs that occurred after 9/11.
The WMD argument for intervention was compelling and consistent with the warnings of Tony Blair in his powerful speech to the Commons on 9/14/01 and Bush's speech to a joint session of Congress on 9/20/01.
Bush's statements about Arab democracy is an outgrowth of an anti-terror policy that is evolving.
By the same standards Friedman should be trashing Lincoln for not being enlightened enough to sign the Emancipation Proclamation before the start of the Civil War.
Great presidents evolve and rise to the occasion.
Friedman would never admit that Bush is capable of such growth.....he'd lose his gig at the Slimes.
As well as all his friends and acquaintances.
And Ronald Reagan's speech at the Brandenburg Gate was written for him, too.It's just that the line, "Mr. Gorbychev, tear down this wall!" kept being pulled out of each draft--by advisors to whom Mr. Reagan was, we were told, a puppet. Ultimately Reagan called in the secretary who would type the final draft and told her that if the next draft came to him without that line in it, she would be fired.
It never seems to be an issue who writes Democratic speeches--Democrats never seem to say anything important enough to worry over it.
He has always pretty much supported the president on his war on terror.
Friedman's an ass. Another liberal jerk...
For the life of me I really don't understand this visceral hatred of this guy. Yes he is a liberal(hey we can't all be prefect) but much of what he says makes sense to me.
International and our own liberals see the United States getting richer and the rest of the world getting poorer. In their very marrow they believe the US has the moral obligation to correct this situation. We already are pouring aid by the ton all over the world. Folks see enough "truth through the fog" to know that even though in some good cases this works as an investment, in most it does nothing, it doesn't "teach them how to fish."
Teaching them how to fish is nation-building. Help these undeveloped nations build such things as an impartial judiciary et cetera.
Bush campaigned, correctly, that as stated, this cannot be our project.
The application of nation-building to Iraq, while just as difficult and problem-prone as it would be elsewhere, is justified. (Note that we are not going to toss around 87 billion dollars every time it might be a good idea to do this). It is justified in the light of seeing the war on Islamofascism and Islamic militant terrorism (World War IV) as similar to the Cold War (World War III).
It is going to take a free Iraq and a free Iran, the people in those countries using their backbone and love of freedom, to fight off the horrible politics of the Middle East, just as it took free countries within the sphere of influence, not just a remote US, to bring the battle to the Soviet Union
Tom Friedman doesn't see all this, he only sees the liberal project. At the least his columns are injecting a certain light into US liberalism, which otherwise is content to say the Iraq war is only about US oil interests.
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