Much of the left/right squabbling in the USA in foreign policy is about both the goals and the methods of achieving them. Is democracy "good" for the ME, is it achievable, by what means, and will we like the results?
I don't think we have a choice but to "like the results".
The result of NOT being a advocate for democracy and positive change in the region will not be something we like either.
What we have in the Mid-East, like any other region that has failed to politically modernize after their colonial period (in this case both the Ottomans and Europeans), is a power struggle between traditionalists and modernists. The traditionalists will to retain their petty non-democratic fiefdoms, many of which derive from their bedouin and tribal necessities of authoritarian rule in such societies.
But there ARE modernists in the Mid-East who have had their voice squashed, or overruled, by their existing powers that see democracy as a threat to their rule, and their vision of Islam.
This is not much different that the battles that were waged during the middle ages as secularists and religious modernists fought the entrenched power of the Catholic church. And that battle required hundreds of years of struggle, and quite often, war.
Which is why I constantly harp about the nature of the battle we're engaged in against the Islamo-Fascists. They are struggling to turn back the clock 100 years, while we have got the burden of trying to convince the people of the region that there is a place for democracy, peace, and economic modernism for the Islamic faith.
And as I've also stated, if it turns out that we find ourselves with a few nations that elect "Hamas" style governments, then we will no longer have to concern ourselves with "innocent civilians". We will be free to confront and wage war against them as we did against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
I certainly do not prefer the latter, but at least we'll know who to count as friends and who to count as enemies.
Hawk |
