Bush Talks A Good Game, Leaving Results To Speak For Themselves

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Bush Talks A Good Game, Leaving Results To Speak For Themselves
John Hanchette
January 25, 2005

Olean, NY - Some observations on current events before I get back to shoveling snow ...

President George W. Bush’s inaugural speech, though somewhat more stirring than I expected, was a bit confusing to me. In using the words "free" or "freedom" more than 25 times, and in describing the spreading of liberty and democracy as "the calling of our time," Bush seemed to be saying he’s not afraid of invading other rogue nations besides Iraq should they approach totalitarian oppression of their populations.

But in the same speech he said the United States "will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way."

I guess we will know more in a week or so when, on Jan. 31, the Iraqis go to the polls to elect their first democratic officials, but if we can believe the picture painted by news dispatches and seemingly informed opinion pieces of late, many Iraqis seem less than thrilled with the prospect of transforming their country into "our style of government." Beheadings make lousy endorsements.

The Bush administration, of course, claims the incredible violence and brutality associated with the runup to that voting is perpetrated by thugs and criminals from other Muslim nations, or from native Iraqis who fear losing power, and that the majority of Iraqis thirst for a democratically fashioned government. We shall see.

Another pothole in Bush’s road to spreading liberty appears to be that election’s likely results. It is pretty clear at this point the big winner in the Jan. 31 contest will be the Shiite majority in Iraq. The big loser will be the Sunni minority. And the common view of Middle East experts is that, once the Shiites are in control, they will heed the wishes of their colleagues in the neighboring Shiite nation of Iran.

Washington, meanwhile, is abuzz with speculation, some of it reaching print, that the White House, Pentagon and national intelligence community consider Iran, which is close to possessing usable nuclear bombs, the next likely target for "democratization" — forced, if necessary.

This seems foolhardy. Didn’t an aggressive fellow named Saddam Hussein try taking on Iran a quarter century ago as one of his first dictatorial initiatives? That war went on for eight years, expended a goodly portion of Iraq’s male youths, and ended miserably for Saddam. The Bush administration can’t seem to control the situation in Iraq. It can’t even raise a military enlistment base necessary for maintaining security there and elsewhere globally needed. How in the world can it now establish military dominance over one of the most powerful Muslim nations on the planet?

Further speculation — uttered by none other than Vice President Dick Cheney himself — holds that Israel might do the job for us by bombing Iranian nuclear facilities if evidence turns irrefutable that Iran has achieved nuclear military power. You think we could avoid being drawn into that one? You think the mullahs in Tehran wouldn’t try to retaliate?

The whole idea of "democratizing" Muslim nations seems to carry the same odds as betting on double zero on the roulette wheel. Of the 60 or so nations that carry a Muslim majority population, only a smattering have even flirted with democracy. These nations, by and large, seem plenty "unwilling" to clutch democracy to their ideological bosoms. No offense meant, but they are literally centuries behind in this process.

Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Mali and Senegal are considered democracies by our State Department. Afghanistan is just starting on the arduous path. Nigeria and Malaysia call themselves democratic, but they lack protections for civil liberties and legitimate opposition parties. Countries such as Morocco, Kuwait, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar and Yemen may have legislatures and political parties, but a president or king or similar figure still exercises final control.

Algeria flirted with successful democracy, beginning in 1989, but national elections that seemed sure to install Islamic fundamentalist candidates — albeit democratically — were called off under pressure from the holier-than-thou French, who were afraid of the influence that might have on the millions of Algerians living in France. It was a pre-emptive coup d’etat on a budding Muslim democracy, and the United States went right along with it, ultimately siding with the autocrats to the detriment of democrats.

Guess who was setting policy in the White House when that happened? Riiiight, the current president’s daddy, Bush the Elder. Algeria was subsequently plunged into a bloody civil war that killed more than 100,000 people.

In fact, the United States and its western-world allies have long talked a good game about democracy in Muslim nations, but the whispered worry in administration after administration is that a truly democratic election in any Muslim nation will almost automatically result in placing Islamic fundamentalists in power. That is probably going to happen next Monday in Iraq. In the usually unspoken view of western policy-makers, elections won by Islamist fundamentalists carry the danger of leading to less democracy rather than more.

If this wasn’t the case, why hasn’t Dubya (or previous presidents) started spreading our system of governance by inserting democracy first into the most totalitarian of countries in the Middle East — our good friend Saudi Arabia? Oil is the answer, as that word is to almost every question about our foreign policy in the Middle East, including this one: Why are we in Iraq?

The influential Council on Foreign Relations has opined that the record of democracy in Muslim countries compares "poorly" to that of other regions in the developing world. Particularly in the Arab world, notes the CFR, "many have taken steps backward in terms of political liberties and electoral democracy in the last 10 years."

There are many hurdles to installing democracy in Muslim nations, writes Sharon Otterman of CFR — entrenched elites, oil, lack of market economies, patriarchal social systems, tribalism, monarchical repression, military governments, political manipulation, poverty, traditional mindsets that democracy is a "foreign, non-Islamic invention."

Another is the religion itself. In Islam, Allah is the giver of laws. Humans have extremely limited autonomy to implement and enforce those laws. These laws are known as sharia — and they apply to all aspects of private life, social life, religious life and political activity. Many Muslim scholars, notes Otterman, see democracy as a flawed system in which the source of law is the mere whim of majority. Still, she notes, all nations create laws, even Muslim ones, and "in a democracy, more checks exist on man’s whim than in an autocracy."

Bush’s inaugural speech is reflective of some recent intellectual input in this area from a couple of low-profile experts on Islamist democracy. One is Noah Feldman, who in 2003 came out with a book titled "After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy."

Feldman, a New York University law professor, claims "this might be the single most pressing question for American foreign policy."

He optimistically notes, "Even in an Islamist democracy, where the people have chosen to be governed solely by Islamic law, leaders would be responsible to an electorate."

The Bush White House was so impressed with Feldman it appointed him to advise the State Department on drafting the Afghan constitution, and then as an adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority that ran Iraq immediately after the invasion.

The other expert is Richard Haass, director of the State Department’s policy planning staff, who as early as 2002 was making speeches to the Council on Foreign Relations and elsewhere, pointing out that earlier administrations such as Clinton’s and Bush the Elder’s had emphasized "stability" and containment over "democratization."

Haass noted, besides a core idealistic principle, espousing democracy in nations that don’t have it is very practical: "Realism and idealism are complementary. Quite simply, we will prosper more as a people and as a nation in a world of democracies than in a world of authoritarian or chaotic regimes ... the more established democracies there are, the larger the area in the world where nations will be more likely to sort out their differences through diplomacy."

Well, maybe. Right now, it seems to me the Bush administration, in pursuit of this goal, is more wedded to chaos than to diplomacy. The president’s inaugural address did little to dispel that notion.