Can We make iraq Democratic? Only if we can create democratic citizens and a democratic culture.

City Journal ^ | Winter 2004 | George F. Will

[redhugh]

President Bush: “Time after time, observers have questioned whether this country, or that people, or this group are 'ready' for democracy—-as if freedom were a prize you win for meeting our own Western standards of progress.”

His idea—-that there is no necessary connection between Western political traditions and the success of democracy—-is important. But is it true?

Today his hypothesis is being tested in Iraq, where an old baseball joke is pertinent. A manager says, “Our team is just two players away from being a championship team. Unfortunately, the two players are Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.” Iraq is just three people away from democratic success. Unfortunately, the three are George Washington, James Madison, and John Marshall.

[redhugh]

A sobering--but not defeatist--reflection on the challenge of stablizing post-war Iraq.

[JackOfClubs1]

It sort of depends on how you define success. Iraq may not look like America any time soon, but it will certainly look better than it has in the past (and better than any of the Arab dictatorships in the region currently do). We have to bear in mind that the US took nearly 100 years after the Revolution before it freed its slaves. And even the Revolution was a development in the history of democracy that can be traced back through the Magna Carta all the way to the Old Testament.

Iraq may be a late starter, but there are plenty of intellectual resources available, if they are willing to make use of them.

[weegee]

I'd think it would be easy to democratize the citizens of Iraq (who is it that says "I don't want any say in the way things run around here"?).

Democratizing leadership is the harder thing. The peaceful transfer of power is the hardest thing to get right and here in America we seem to be losing it. Mobs fighting in the streets denying an election and soliciting help from foreign nations to defeat the elected leader of our soverign nation marks an end to civil behavior in elections.

True "democracy" is mob rule and a mob can be tyranical just like a government.

We have a democratically elected republic but the liberal agitators in the media like to keep this factoid hush around the undereducated masses. One day the liberals (and anarchists) may get the civil war they are stoking for.

That said, the Iraqis don't need to look at our current problems as a condemnation of democracy.

P.S. Lest any lurking libs think that we were wrong to push for regime change in Iraq because they were a soverign nation with an "elected" leader: Saddam had violated the UN resolutions for 12 years and was offered the opportunity to step down. The same libs that decry President Bush's victory as "false" are quick to believe that 100% of the voting public in Iraq elected Saddam Hussein.

[Redbob]

Why not Republican?
Couldn't we make Iraq Republican?

After all, what have the citizens of Iraq ever done to deserve being Democrats?

[BIGZ]

Democracy in itself is not the answer, as a mater of fact Democracy alone is nothing but the rule of the majority, and usualy a failure, because people will always vote largess and contribute little. The United States is not a Democracy, it is a Rebublic and as such single groups or individuals can't dictate political doctrine, as in the Muslim countries with their religious tenents.

The United States is a success because it is a Free-Rebublic that is driven by free enterprise. Free enterprise and Democracy are not Synonymous. Iraq will never be success unless you have a free people, making money or have the ability to make money. The basis is there, you can own land in Iraq and land is the ultimate asset, the basis of free enterprise.

[walford]

Here are some important excerpts from George Will's excruciatingly long-winded and rambling missive that need to be added:

...When the Cold War ended, my friend Pat Moynihan asked me: “What are you conservatives going to hate, now that you can’t hate Moscow?” My instant response was: “We are going to hate Brussels”—Brussels, because it is the banal home of the metastasizing impulse to transfer political power from national parliaments to supranational agencies that are essentially unaccountable and unrepresentative...

...Many advocates of subjugated peoples and nascent nations came to Paris, drawn by the magnetism of the central Wilsonian principle: self-determination. What exactly Wilson meant by that was a mystery to, among others, Wilson’s secretary of state, Robert Lansing, who wondered: “When the President talks of 'self-determination' what unit does he have in mind? Does he mean a race, a territorial area, or a community?” Nineteen years later, Hitler championed Sudeten Germans, using Wilsonian language about the right to ethnic self-determination...

...Speaking to Lloyd George’s mistress, Frances Stevenson, over a luncheon plate of chicken, Clemenceau said: “I have come to the conclusion that force is right. Why is this chicken here? Because it was not strong enough to resist those who wanted to kill it. And a very good thing too!” What shaped Clemenceau’s dark realism was life on a continent that included such countries as Albania, in parts of which one man in five died in blood feuds...

...Most of the political calamities through which the world has staggered since 1919 have resulted from the distinctively modern belief that things—including nations and human nature—are much more plastic, much more malleable, than they actually are. It is the belief that nations are like Tinkertoys: they can be taken apart and rearranged at will. It is the belief that human beings are soft clay that can be shaped by the hands of political artists...

...Today, European elites believe that Europe’s nations are menaced by their own sovereignty. These elites blame Europe’s recent blood-soaked history on the nation-state itself—including democratic states. For this reason, the European Union is attempting to turn itself into a single entity without sovereign nations—a federal entity, but a single political entity under a new constitution. The intended effect of the proposed constitution is to dissolve Europe’s nation-states, reducing them to administrative departments of a supranational state...

...the aim of the proposed constitution’s more than 400 articles is to put as many matters as possible beyond debate. Beyond the reach of majorities. Beyond democracy. Article Ten of the EU constitution says: “The Constitution, and law adopted by the Union’s Institutions in exercising competences conferred on it [sic], shall have primacy over the law of the Member States.”

...The histories of America and Europe have given rise to markedly different judgments about democracy and nationalism. Americans have cheerful thoughts, and Europeans have dark thoughts, about uniting democracy and nationalism. Hence Americans and Europeans have different ideas of what constitutions should do—ideas that lead to different valuations of international laws and institutions.

Americans believe that a democracy’s constitution should arise from, and reflect the particularities of, that nation’s distinctive political culture. Europeans’ quite different idea of constitutions implies a bitterly disparaging self-assessment. Their idea of what constitutions are for is a recoil from the savagery of their twentieth-century experiences. The purpose of their constitutions is to contract radically the sphere of self-government—of democratic politics...
Iraq in its quest for democracy lacks only—only!—what America then had: an existing democratic culture. It is a historical truism that the Declaration of Independence was less the creation of independence than the affirmation that Americans had already become independent. In the decades before 1776 they had become a distinct people, a demos, a nation—held together by the glue of shared memories, common strivings, and shared ideals. As John Adams said, the revolution had occurred in the minds and hearts of Americans before the incident at Concord Bridge...

...It is counted realism in Washington now to say that creating a new Iraqi regime may require perhaps two years. One wonders: Does Washington remember that it took a generation, and the United States Army, to bring about, in effect, regime change—a change of institutions and mores—in the American South? Will a Middle Eastern nation prove more plastic to our touch than Mississippi was? Will two years suffice for America—as Woodrow Wilson said of the Latin American republics—to teach Iraq to elect good men? We are, it seems, fated to learn again the limits of the Wilsonian project.

There are those who say: “Differences be damned! America has a duty to accomplish that project.” They should remember an elemental principle of moral reasoning: there can be no duty to do what cannot be done...
We dare not leave having replaced a savage state with a failed state—a vacuum into which evil forces will flow. Our aim should be the rule of law, a quickened pulse of civil society, some system of political representation. Then, let us vow not to take on such reconstructions often...

George Will conspicuously omitted the fact that after WWII, the German, Japanese and Italian people had no prior experience with limited representative government either. The victorious Allies sat on them until the job was done. He is only making the case that we must stay there as long as it takes. Living with an aggressive dictatorship is not a sensible option.

Iraq & North Korea: Yesterday's Unfinished Business, Tomorrow's Bloodshed

...As the Allies considered their ultimate objectives during the Second World War, there was no conception of leaving any Axis regime intact. It was then agreed that victory could only be defined by securing unconditional surrender followed by an occupation that would continue until the last vestiges of the aggressor regimes were eliminated. The job would be completed by a deep commitment to nurture popularly-legitimized governments and economies based upon investment and hard work rather than cronyism.

History has repeatedly shown that free societies cannot ‘contain’ or otherwise peacefully coexist with dictatorship. The Saddams and Kim Jong-Ils of the world recognize this – it is time we do also and act accordingly. If freedom is to survive, diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions and/or military force must be judiciously and methodically brought to bear with the ultimate object being the eradication of tyranny wherever it exists. Then, and only then, will there be any prospect of a lasting peace...

[TheDon]

Hmmmm....guess George forgot about Turkey. Get ready, the Middle East is about to join the civilized world. Even if they have to be dragged kicking and screaming into it, as Afghanistan and Iraq have been.

[q_an_a]

if the Friday worship is any vision of their future, then I shall pray for them because they seem to be too emotional to get much accomplished.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Can we make the US a Democratic Republic?

[My2Cents]

I think Bush's premise is that the liberty is a God-given right given universally to all people, and that the desire for liberty beats in the heart of every human being. The extent to which this premise is correct is the extent to which our efforts in Iraq will be successful. But even in this country, it took several "interventions" by God to secure our liberty and establish our nation upon it. If liberty is to flourish in Iraq, it will take more than clever policy initiatives by the US government. It will take a few miracles, but the effort is better than maintaining the status quo.

[My2Cents]

George Will has turned into something of a humbug in recent years.

[CyberAnt]

We'll do great helping Iraq to become democratic .. just as long as we don't help them become DEMOCRATS!!!

[Pan_Yans Wife]

What is to be done in Iraq? As Robert Frost said, the best way out is always through. We are there. We dare not leave having replaced a savage state with a failed state—a vacuum into which evil forces will flow. Our aim should be the rule of law, a quickened pulse of civil society, some system of political representation. Then, let us vow not to take on such reconstructions often.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

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