Democracy not a cure-all drug for the Arab world
13/11/2003
There is no doubt that George W. Bush ought to receive more credit than he has to date for his commitment to a viable Palestine state living side by side with Israel - the first American president to do so - and his launching earlier this month of "a forward strategy for freedom in the Middle East."
His admirable recognition of past failures - including, by implication, the administration of his father, George Bush - were equally praiseworthy: "Sixty years of western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty."
Bush continued: "As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export.
Catastrophic harm
And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo."
He also took another laudable step in asserting that it should be clear to all that Islam "the faith of one-fifth of humanity is consistent with democratic rule."
He went on: "More than half of all the Muslims in the world live in freedom under democratically constituted governments. They succeed in democratic societies, not in spite of their faith, but because of it. A religion that demands individual moral accountability, and encourages the encounter of the individual with God, is fully compatible with the rights and responsibilities of self-government."
The American president then pledged his commitment to democracy in the Middle East "for decades to come." But, regrettably, he stopped short of spelling out his long-term strategy and thereby opened his administration, if not his leadership, to severe criticism.
This point was correctly stressed by Madeline Albright, the former secretary of state, in a television interview this week. "I'm very much for democracy everywhere in the Middle East … but I don't think you begin pushing democracy through the barrel of a gun," she said. "I think it's very hard to persuade people that democracy comes with an invasion."
Richard Holbrooke, the former American ambassador to the United Nations who played a key role in the negotiated settlement in Bosnia, clashed with Richard Perle, the celebrated pro-Israeli neo-conservative with strong ties to the Pentagon establishment, arguing on television that the United States cannot "build a government … democracy … while there is a war going on" - in Iraq.
The question remains whether Bush, who was known to be averse to nation-building, is willing to go beyond his eloquence and take a firmer step in bringing this grandiose scheme to fruition, or else amount to, as has been described, "the hole in the doughnut." This commitment, it should be recognised, is also "a massive and difficult undertaking" which could go a long way toward improving America's ugly image overseas.
For a start, President Bush needs to be ready for some serious introspection and examine his administration's lopsided policy in the Middle East which by most accounts shares as much of the blame as he bestowed on his predecessors for not allowing democracy to take root.
The Arab world, and the outlying states in the region, have been consumed for decades by regional conflicts and internal strife, sometimes inspired by foreign hands.
A case in point has been the American-championed overthrow of the democratically-elected Mossadeq regime in Iran which brought back the discredited Shah.
Likewise, the early American support of Iraq's Saddam Hussain in his war against the Tehran government, a war that has been very costly in human life and resources which the region needed badly - and which in the end provided the spark for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent American intervention in 1991.
Blatant violations
Bush's failure to address Israel's blatant violations of international codes of conduct - its occupation of Palestinian lands in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is now in its 36th year has robbed the American president any sympathetic consideration from the region that is crying for a deep-rooted change in the status quo.
In fact, his declared readiness to battle for democracy in the Middle East has been interpreted as yet another diversionary action from the quagmire that is Iraq and typical of the unilateralism that has been the hallmark of this conservative administration.
Democracy is not a cure-all drug that the Arab world is not ready to swallow and Arab democracies could still turn out to be anti-American as long as the United States remains timid and incapable of pushing Israel to reach a fair and an honourable accommodation with its neighbours, the Palestinians, and the Arab world at large.
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