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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (15611)	11/8/2003 9:58:28 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 793670

Lead editorial from the Post. A Democracy Policy Sunday, November 9, 2003; Page B06 SOME CRITICS CAST President Bush's speech on democracy in the Middle East Thursday as merely another effort to repackage his troubled and costly mission in Iraq. But the president deserves more credit than that: Not only has he been talking about a political transformation of Arab countries since before the war, but he's right to conclude that such a project is vital to victory in the war on terrorism. "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," Mr. Bush told supporters of the National Endowment for Democracy on its 20th anniversary. His speech was notable for such forthrightness; the president went on to say that "the United States has adopted a new policy" for the Middle East and singled out, as countries that must change, not just traditional U.S. adversaries such as Syria but allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The lingering question, as it is so often with Mr. Bush, is how quickly and fully the rhetoric will translate into action. The president's "Marshall Plan" for Afghanistan never materialized; his ambitious "road map" for an Israeli-Palestinian peace didn't get past the first stop sign. A policy to promote democracy in the Middle East, even if defined as the work of decades, will require not just soaring speeches but far-reaching changes in U.S. practices and substantial costs. Though the administration has already been talking about the new strategy for many months, there has been no substantial follow-up so far -- other than a start on a new democratic political system for Iraq. Iraq, of course, is now the key to the region's political future, as Mr. Bush again pointed out. If the United States can succeed in nourishing democracy there, it will galvanize and empower the nascent democratic movements around the region. Failure would doom the larger project and encourage an explosion of anti-Western extremism. For Mr. Bush to say that this "massive and difficult undertaking . . . is worth our sacrifice" is not only a way to justify the losses in Iraq. It is a truth that opponents as well as supporters of the war should be able to accept. The goal of liberalizing Iraq and the Middle East can and should be a bipartisan cause. It should also be an international cause. Mr. Bush should reach out to Democrats in Congress as well as European allies and urge them to join in the project. He should also begin to demonstrate to people in the Middle East that he means what he says. So far U.S. democracy programs in the region have been squeezed into the margin alongside the traditional relationships with corrupt and autocratic governments. Independent civic movements, tiny political parties, human rights activists and dissidents -- the sort of people the United States backed during the Reagan-era campaign for democracy lauded by Mr. Bush -- are mostly ignored. Even Palestinian reformers don't get much help when such help threatens to irritate the current, hawkish government of Israel. Arab spokesmen who say that the United States cannot impose democracy from the outside are right, but U.S. aid, encouragement and protection can do much to nourish Arab democrats. Openly backing those freedom fighters will mean confronting old "friends" such as Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah or Israel's Ariel Sharon, rulers on whom the United States has considerable leverage. The leverage should be used carefully, of course; change cannot happen immediately. Yet one measure of U.S. policy in the Middle East will be whether, in addition to threatening its longstanding enemies, the Bush administration begins to talk differently to some of its allies. © 2003 The Washington Post Company