Bush is right, the Middle East is ripe for democracy

THE election of Hamas in Palestine, together with the strong showing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and of the Shia parties in Iraq, is being cited by many on the Left and the Right as proof that it's naive folly for the US to not just support but propagate democracy to the world at large, and the Middle East in particular.

Let's begin with the most common, which is that, although these elections were free and fair, they are likely to produce a Hamas government committed to the destruction of Israel and the use of violence, including terror. The Muslim Brotherhood is hardly pro-American, and the Shia-led Government in Iraq has close links with an extremely hostile Iran. We did not like these outcomes so it was folly to allow, let alone encourage, these elections to take place at all.

You only have to state this argument to see how truly odious it is. Furthermore, it's an argument that assumes democratic elections give legitimacy not just to the government elected, but to all the policies of that government. Why should this be so? The policies of the governments of the US, Australia, Spain, France, Japan, South Korea and any number of other democratically elected governments are deeply opposed by many other countries and peoples, including, often, by many of their own citizens. Does that mean we should oppose democratic elections for these countries? It's a nonsense.

The Palestinians have made their choice (which I suspect was driven much more by a desire for peace and economic security than Islamic fundamentalism or a desire to obliterate Israel). Whatever their reasons, they now have to live with the consequences of their choice of government, which are likely to be severe in economic and political terms.

George W. Bush was not naive in his second inaugural address last year when he said it was long-term US policy to pursue the end of tyranny in the world because that was vital to US security interests. He said this would take "the concentrated work of generations". And he said that when people vote, "the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own".

In his State of the Union address this week he said: "Democracies in the Middle East will not look like our own."

In any case, is there some view that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was more positive for our interests than a democratically elected Shia government? Or that the shambles that was Palestine under a corrupt and incompetent Fatah, in which Hamas was able to operate freely and without responsibility, was a better scenario for the future than now, when it is open to accountability as a government? Elections may or may not have made things better, but things won't be worse.

The second argument is one I recently heard in a high-quality forum discussing global affairs. These countries in the Middle East, we were told, "are not ready for democracy".

Yet again and again in recent decades, oppressed people, when given the chance to vote - whether in Namibia, Cambodia, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan or elsewhere - defy threats of violence and vote in huge numbers, joyously, exuberantly. So I ask this simple question: Who is to decide when these people are "ready for democracy"? Should it be some mysterious group of philosopher-kings? Or a group of wise men in a Washington think tank? Or even the UN? Or is it part of the inherent freedom of every human being that no other person, however well-intentioned, should have the right to say, "No vote today for you - maybe in a few decades - I'll let you know"?

This argument about being "not ready" frequently morphs into a discussion about the need for prior development of civil institutions and the rule of law if democracy is to take root. Yet there's little evidence to support this as a general proposition.

Before the end of World War II in 1945, there were only a handful of democracies. Today there are more than 100. Those 100-plus democracies were created in many different ways. Some were imposed by World War II victors: Germany, for example, Japan and South Korea. Many grew out of the post-colonial environment, with only the most flimsy indigenous civil society and rule of law.

And of course the fate of democracy is by no means assured. There are plenty of examples of the "one man, one vote, one time" situation where democracy is followed by dictatorship. There have been plenty of military coups and outside interventions crushing democracy, not just in eastern Europe but in Latin America (Chile and Guatemala) and the Middle East (Iran in 1953). Russia today and many of the former southern Soviet republics are a pale shadow of the democratic ideal with which they were seized in the 1990s. These failures are said to show that these countries were "not ready".

The remarkable thing is that many countries have bounced back from democratic regression to renewed democracy: Thailand, South Korea, Chile are just a few examples. The whole of eastern Europe is another. It's incredibly difficult to keep down the instinct for liberty.

What is perhaps a more important lesson from democratic failures is not that it shows these countries were not ready. People are always ready and eager for democracy. Rather, these failures show how freedom and democracy are not things that, once gained, can never be lost. They have to be fought for every day. This applies even to longstanding democracies such as Australia, Britain and the US, let alone fledgling democracies.

George F. Kennan was the US State Department officer whose famous "long telegram" from Moscow in 1946 proposed the containment plan that was the basis of US strategy for the Cold War.

Yet it was this same Kennan, a fierce foe of Soviet totalitarianism, who warned in 1947: "The fact of the matter is that there is a little of the totalitarian buried somewhere, way down deep, in each and every one of us." He warned that unless we were alert, we might ourselves through fear be susceptible to the totalitarianism we oppose. You don't have to take the offensive and ludicrous position being pushed around by some, that Bush and John Howard are Hitler-like, to heed Kennan's warning and be alert for our liberties.

The Soviet and east European moment to shift from authoritarian stability to democracy came as a bolt from the blue in the 1980s.

This is depressing....

http://www.forward.com/articles/7287
You Wouldn't Know
February 3, 2006

Watching President Bush deliver his annual State of the Union address to Congress and the nation this week, it was hard not to notice the subdued, almost chastened tone of his delivery. Gone were the trademark winks and expansive body language that have characterized his public appearances for years. He was, like his message, restrained, at times almost downbeat.

And with good reason. He had to acknowledge that his most ambitious goal for his second term, the reform of Social Security that he announced in last year's speech, is as good as dead. The rest of his domestic program consisted of a grab bag of small gestures of little lasting significance. He could hardly aim any higher, given the constraints imposed by the massive budget deficits that he created and cannot fix. As for his onetime dream of being a uniter, it is now reduced to pleading for civility in public debate — and even that was followed by a cheap swipe at critics of his Iraq policy, whom he accused of "defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure."

It's too bad. If things were less polarized, the president might be of a mind to take a page from his critics and learn something about acknowledging failure. More than half his speech was devoted to defending his global war on terrorism. To hear him talk, you might think we were winning.

Bush presented his war strategy as nothing less than a millennial mission to bring "the end of tyranny in our world" by exporting electoral democracy, mostly to the Muslim peoples of the Middle East. By so doing, he said, we will put Islamic radicalism on the run, "deliver the oppressed and move this world toward peace." In practical terms, the campaign has three main fronts: hunting down terror networks like Al Qaeda, winning the war in Iraq and supporting "democratic reform across the broader Middle East." On each of those fronts, he said, we're moving forward. We've "killed or captured" many leaders of the global terror networks. We've got a plan for victory in Iraq, where the people can all but taste the "benefits of freedom." Best of all, we've led the way to model elections in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority.

He also made brief mention of Iran, "a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite." Iran supports terrorism in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories, he said. It also aims to acquire nuclear weapons. That, he said, is something "the nations of the world must not permit." Then, speaking directly to "the citizens of Iran," he declared that he "respects your right to choose your own future" and "hopes one day to be the closest of friends."

Listening to the president, you might actually be tempted to think that democracy actually does help to temper extremism and weaken terrorists. You wouldn't necessarily know that the effects of the administration's crusade to liberate the globe have strategists in friendly capitals around the world tearing their hair in despair.

You wouldn't necessarily know that the "clerical elite" running Iran was freely chosen by Iranian voters in a multi-candidate election. For that matter, you wouldn't know that its ambitions include not just acquiring a nuclear bomb but also "wiping Israel off the map." Nor would you know that the West's ability to restrain Iranian ambition has been greatly reduced by the elimination of Iran's main strategic rival, Saddam Hussein.

You wouldn't know that the model elections held last week in the Palestinian territories, in large part at the insistence of the Bush administration, have given power to an Islamic radical group that glorifies terrorism and that wants, like the Iranians, to eliminate the Jewish state.

Listening to the president, you might actually think that the world was a safer place today as a result of his policies. You might think that democracy magically transforms fanatics into reasonable people rather than merely empowering them to pursue their goals.

But if you looked at his body language, you might suspect that he knows, somewhere deep inside, that it's not working, and that he just doesn't know how to acknowledge failure.

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