Forget Democracy Promotion, Go for Democracy Preservation
After decades of failing to reform Arab and Muslim societies, the U.S. should focus not on exporting democracy, but on bolstering it wherever it already thrives.
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Democracy may have been a paradigm once aspired to in the Arab-Muslim world, but the dominant reality today is the religious ethnic militia. In some places like Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, these armed entities displaced central authority altogether.
Ironically it may be the pursuit of force-fed democracy that cleared the way for its confiscation by those men in turbans and ski masks and potentates who color the landscape.
A prime model was the Iranian revolution of the late seventies, a supremely democratic movement to those of us who watched it grow to immobilize scores of cities, with millions on the march bearing tulips to soldiers and braving the Shah’s bullets until his army folded and he fled.
Iran’s revolution was a communal democratic exercise of the will of a people choosing to vote with their lives and bring a seemingly wholesome, just rule by mullahs to power. Westernized Iranians quickly fled after they saw little in common with those masses of religious aspirations. But the grand majority of Iran’s 70 million continue to this day to defend their revolution, fighting two decades ago, for example, in the eight-year war with Iraq to protect it by the millions.
Similarly, Islamist Hamas came to the fore with a certified free vote among Palestinians, under the gaze of Western observers. A majority elected the veil and bearded sheikhs to lead them in a new way of life. We don’t know if there will be free elections again as Palestinians appear to have crossed a generational Rubicon onto enduring Islamism, not lasting democracy.
It is wrong to assume the will of the people will always be freedom.
Should Hosni Mubarak ever extend free elections to those outside his family, every poll shows the fascist Muslim Brotherhood — which believes in one vote, one time, under one religious supreme leader and Sharia law — to be the overwhelming choice of a majority of 80 million Egyptians. The only opposition will come from the 10 million Christian minorities and a few million secularist Muslims, all destined to be served for breakfast by the incoming “brothers.”
There will be similar “democratic” swings in Jordan or Morocco should these monarchies permit free choice. In Pakistan military dictatorships all the way back to General Zia ul-Haq and an alternate feudal collection of civilian parties opted for over 30 years to make nice with the Taliban, empower turbaned preachers, and expand Sharia laws, surrendering so much that any talk of freedom is superfluous.
Over in the Arabian Gulf, where Bedouin culture never met an election it liked, the only refinement oil money brought are chic burqas and furtive looks modernizing oppression. Religious stupor in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and nearby is the operative social project with state-of-the-art mosques and TV networks drawing thousands to have their minds impounded.
Most dramatically, in “liberated” Iraq, where American troops overthrew a despotic regime, the people chose tribal tyranny to replace it. The elected are a Shiite coalition of armed militias whose priority project is ethnically cleansing Iraq of Sunnis and Kurds and a greater ascendancy of Shiism in tandem with Iran. In the mountains of Kurdistan where Western protection guaranteed democracy for Kurds since 1990, the militias there are not struggling toward multiculturalism but to throw the Arabs out.
In poll after poll a grand majority of Muslims and Arabs tell us they believe individual freedom, liberalism, and secularism — those enduring values of Western democracies — are rotten and the West decadent.
So if democracy is not a worthy American pursuit out there for the next administration, what is?
Obama says he wants to talk to the bad guys while McCain wants to fight them, but neither outlines a goal. Hillary wants to do a little of both fighting and talking, with no goalpost altogether. A clearer objective for an incoming administration may be not exporting democracy, but supporting it wherever it thrives.
Is this a quest for new isolationism? Far from it. It is a quest for a rational strategic common realignment. Outside the neurotic self-obsessed Islamo-Arab arena with teeming militias and wars to revive some mythical Islamist ummah, there is a huge growing democratic world of greener pastures in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Instead of leading recalcitrant horses to drink from wells they wish to poison, let in those who want to partake in a redefined community.
The more you think of it, the more Senator McCain’s idea of a “Democratic League of Nations” sounds like the 21st century strategic substitute to the furtive, aging NATO or the haplessly compromised United Nations. Indeed it sounds like a worthy new paradigm.
Youssef M. Ibrahim, a freelance writer and risk consultant, is a former New York Times Mideast correspondent and Energy Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He can be reached at ymibrahim2004@yahoo.com.
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12 Comments
1. Roark:Earth to Youssef M. Ibrahim; “democracy” is the problem!-what is needed to preserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are constitutional republics that protect individual rights and capitalism by protecting it from the mob rule of “might makes right”, i.e. democracy.
May 30, 2008 - 10:30 am 2. Spinoneone:Roark makes a point, but misses the fact that Islam in and of itself is virulently anti-democratic and totally non-republican. The Qu’ran and Hadith teach that there should be one man rule with an advisory council composed of theologians, and lawyers well versed in Sharia law. No vote equals no problem for the people, or with the people for that matter. Of course, as we have seen both currently and historically, one man rule begets various “royal” houses which perpetuate themselves until a stronger “royal” house comes along….and then the song repeats itself.
May 30, 2008 - 11:18 am 3. greywar:Constitutional Republics degenerate rather quickly into totalitarian states.
May 30, 2008 - 12:33 pm 4. Wearyman:Roark-
You are partially correct, as is Mr. Ibrahim.
Both of you are dancing around the central problem that Spinoneone nails.
The problem IS ISLAM, as Spinoneone has described it. The only solution is to remove the problem. ISLAM must be destroyed. It must be outlawed in all Western Democracies as a dangerous foreign political entity, and fought abroad. Initially it needs to be expunged from our shores via laws against it and severe travel and economic restrictions on Muslims. Once it is impossible to earn a living as a Muslim, Western Muslims that truly want to integrate will drop Islam like a hot potato.
Those that refuse to abandon Islam would be deported back to the Muslim country of their choice. With Islam gone from Western Shores, The Democracies of the world can get about the business of politically and economically squeezing Islam down into it’s traditional home, the deserts of the Arabias.
Once reduced in scope, the nations there must be further pressured economically and politically until their economies and governments collapse. Then we supply help, along with floods of missionaries, and convert the lot of them.
No Genocide, Just aggressive political and economic policy applied over time, until the day that Christian Arabs march into mecca square with a construction crew and build a Church on the ruins of the long abandoned mosque there.
The West CAN take back the world for Democracy, we just have to have the courage to fight the real enemy, Islam.
May 30, 2008 - 1:13 pm 5. gcblues:democracy building is for chumps.
i had an email conversation with Richard Miniter. i explained the USA had every right to to attack and kill Taliban, and Saddam and his followers. we should have then put their heads on stakes, and leave with the warning do not make us return. he replied with a WW2 analogy, saying i quote” the sad fact is war requires the occupation of land” what drivel. when i asked who is japan and Germany in this fight and what percentage of the Islamic world he suggests we hold, he did not reply and blocked me from his blog.
Pathetic weak knee jerk thinking has made this situation worse and worse. thinking like Richard’s and his cowardly response is typical.
he shows no knowledge, despite his visits of the arena. without our help, Persians, turks afghans would all hate Arabs. when Bin Laden first went to Afghanistan, Afghans ridiculed him. He was allowed to stay only because of Arab money, but was purposely excluded from the fight as he was seen as an incompetent. it is our “democracy building” and support of UN negotiation that has crystallized and united our foes. instead of letting the resident parties from Pakistan to Egypt, including Israel kill each other until they tired of the blood letting we have nurtured and fertilized the death, destruction and barbed wire camps generations have lived behind. if their blood letting trespasses the boundary of their arena, we should respond, if not, who the hell are we to not let them solve this as they wish.i do not doubt the good intentions of democracy building. i just know it is obvious dumb bunny policy. Dumb Bunny policy Richard was unable to defend.
May 30, 2008 - 1:42 pm 6. Roark:Wearyman,
You are correct in stating that it is islam itself which is the problem. In fact, ones philosophy/psychology of life has a direct effect on ones value for or against liberty. islam is a religion based on death and irrationality. Liberty and islam are completely incompatible. I highly recommend reading the Ayn Rand Institutes op-ed’s on religion in general and islam in particular.
May 30, 2008 - 2:17 pm 7. gcblues:Roark weary.
May 30, 2008 - 5:07 pm 8. Benson:your analysis is real sweet, unfortunately, killing them all, enslaving them all, or killing enough of them to only have converts left alive is a losing strategy.
Islam is no more evil than communism, yet we had much more success with containment than slaughter. respectfully, i suggest you rethink your strategy. as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon et al prove, a strategy with a mythical end game is a losing game. perhaps you will see the light when the executions during futbol halftimes begin in Pakistan. Boots on the ground will not yield a win, it is a tactic, not a strategy, not an end game. contain, divide, and drain their resources is much more workable.
Excellent. We are finally getting to the heart of the matter! It’s too bad that this debate will not be exposed to a much, much wider audience.
I live outside the USA, in a nation where people claim to want — and also claim occasionally to practice — democracy. The truth dawned on me belatedly: it’s all an illusion. People here do not understand democracy because its fundamental principles are not at all part of the local value system. How do you impose that kind of change?
IMHO, the best government defends the individual and exalts the values of the Enlightenment. Any such government must consider Islam its blood enemy, and treat it accordingly. That means disposing of the myth of the moderate Muslim. Because millions assert and actually believe in the inerrancy of the Koran and Hadith, liberty everywhere is at great risk.
If we can agree on the both futility of imposing democracy and the danger posed by Islam, we may be able to devise a strategy for the survival of our civilization. Debates like this one are a necessary first step.
May 30, 2008 - 6:51 pm 9. Roark:gcblues, you seem to think that I am endorsing the wholesale slaughter of all islamists. Quite the contrary. I do endorse the wholesale slaughter of the anti-life philosophy of islam via reason and the use of force against those within the religion who are openly hostile to Western values. Containment is a buzzword for surrender and can never come to any good for a free society that requires all men honor an individuals right to life, liberty, and rational happiness.
May 30, 2008 - 7:45 pm 10. John Samford:You couldn’t be more wrong.
First, it hasn’t been decades, only 4 years.
The Bush administration is the first western government to attempt to plant the seeds of consensual government amongst the Arabs.
You don’t even know what government of the people, by the people, for the people means if you mistake it with the direct or indirect colonialism used on the ME by Western governments for the last several centuries.
Because you are clueless about what you are seeing in Iraq, you don’t realize that Iraq is well on it’s way to being the first Arab ‘Democracy’. Don’t let the tribal base fool you.
Western ‘Democracies’ (I’m using ‘democracy’ to indicate ANY type of government by consensus or representation) are rooted in the feudal system and the holding of land. That is the way Western civilization evolved. Arabic civilization has nomadic roots and is based on herds and flocks, not direct ownership of land.
Western Democracy is geographical, with snout counting done by where the snout lives.
It would make sense for an Arab democracy to count snouts by tribe, not residence.
Westerners associate by village, even though the village have grown huge.
Arabs associate by tribe, even through the tribes have grown huge.
Bicameral legislative bodies are the most effective form of democracy so it wouldn’t surprise me to see Iraq evolve into a ‘lower house’ with the representatives selected by vote among the tribes, while a ‘hose of lords’ formed from the most prominent members of the tribes acts as a Senate.
The Iraqi’s as a group are smart people, like the rest of the Arabs. Given a chance, they will work it out. America’s part in this process is to buy them the time they need to work it out. We will buy them that time.
We won’t quit. That is why America is the World’s Hyperpower. Why it is an American flag hanging in the near vacumn of the Moon’s surface, why American robots are working on Mars and dropping bombs on the Jihadists. Why citizens of Japan, S, Korea, and South America can vote for their leadership. I could also include most of Europe in that list.
WE don’t quit when the going gets tough.
That fact will be driven home again this November.
You are correct about the UN needing to be replaced. Big Mac’s idea is just one of several. I like this one;
http://www.ccd21.org/
I like it because it’s NOT American. The Poles started it and that should make it better, since the Polish have struggled for a long time to rule their own lives. Now they do and they have lesson to pass on. I also like it because the Department of State hates it. IMHO, there is no higher recommendation.
May 30, 2008 - 9:45 pm 11. So Cal Jim:Thoughtful comments all. I tend to agree with Wearyman. It’s obvious to anyone but the most rabidly insane multiculturalist that Muslims are NOT integrating into European society. The most significant reason for this is that the Europeans themselves have rejected classic Western civilization for a delusional, impossible socialism. Hard belief in Islam will win out over a squishy belief in nothing and everything which is what Western schools and universities have been pushing for years. Because of this, unless something tremendous and unforeseen happens, Europe will cease to be “Western” within our children’s lifetimes. The irony is that there will be NO multiculturalism or “political correctness” then. The USA is not immune to the same fate. If we continue marching into the multicultural/politically correct abyss, we too will lose our Western culture and our freedom with it.
Jun 1, 2008 - 9:16 pm 12. Redmanfms:“….unfortunately, killing them all, enslaving them all, or killing enough of them to only have converts left alive is a losing strategy.”
It doesn’t appear to be a losing strategy for the Islamists……
Besides, the people you were quoting weren’t suggesting genocide. Islamists on the other hand, are, OPENLY.
“Islam is no more evil than communism, yet we had much more success with containment than slaughter….Boots on the ground will not yield a win, it is a tactic, not a strategy, not an end game. contain, divide, and drain their resources is much more workable.”
This statement shows a fundamental lack of knowledge AND understanding of history.
Communism was contained primarily through MILITARY ACTION. To deny so is to piss on the deaths of 100,000 Americans and several million other people.
Jun 2, 2008 - 5:01 pm