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Great news—U.S. abandons utopian goal of “democratization”
At long last, some news from the Iraqi occupation that makes sense, in both senses of the term—that is, it is both intelligent (i.e., it sounds like a good idea) and intelligible (i.e., one can make sense of it). The intelligent part comes from the Administration; the intelligible part comes from Daniel Pipes. In brief, the Administration has decided to speed the transition to Iraqi sovereignty and (get this!) to abandon the project of “democratizing” the country through the writing of a constitution prior to the handing over of sovereignty. Instead, the formal U.S. occupation will end by June 2004, becoming a mere “military presence,” while the American civilian administrator, Paul Bremer, will, according to the Associated Press, “name an interim Iraqi leader with authority to govern the country until a constitution can be written and elections held.” As Pipes puts it, the new emphasis is “less on establishing a Jeffersonian democracy than on shifting power and responsibility to Iraqis, and doing so pronto.” (Moreover, this seems to be happening in direct contradiction to the president’s recent “Democracy for Islam” speech, showing once again that, for good or ill, his large policy pronouncements cannot be taken at face value.) All this is extremely welcome because, every time I had read about how “success” in the U.S. occupation meant helping the Iraqis build democratic constitutional procedures, elections, representative bodies and so on, I had thought, what does any of that have to do with creating an Iraqi government that can maintain its own existence against the forces that will seek to destroy it as soon as the U.S. leaves? Before there can be a democracy, or representative government, or guarantees of individual rights, or equality of women, there must first be an existing sovereign power. Well, from my mouth to the president’s ears, as the saying goes. Under the new policy, the U.S. is not going to put in place a “democracy”; it’s going to put in place an interim strongman of our choosing who in turn will lead the Iraqis toward a new government of their choosing. Pipes further explains why the Japanese and German model did not apply to Iraq. The peoples of Germany and Japan had been crushed and defeated in years-long wars and were ready to be re-made by their conqueror, the United States. The Iraq war, by contrast, was three weeks long and left the country unscarred. The Iraqi people were not defeated, but liberated, while the Americans, having engaged in a such a short war to defeat Iraq, do not feel invested in recreating Iraq. Again, all of this is most welcome. Finally, to see how this new departure in U.S. policy corresponds with the criticisms of “democratization” I was making before the war, see this brief selection of my articles from early 2003:
Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 19, 2003 07:09 AM | Send Comments
Unfortunately, in Bush’s speech in the UK this morning (which I listened to part of on CSPAN Radio) he made it very clear that in his view the WOT cannot work without converting the middle east to democracy and establishing a new democratic Palestinian state (in addition to the Palestinian monarchy that already exists called “Jordan,” though he didn’t put it that way of course). He also made the point overtly that democracy _should_ be feared as a force that will destroy the world envisioned by…well, I forgot what euphemism he used for radical Islam, but he meant radical Islam. (It is a true point of course, but that is one reason among many why the imposition of liberal democracy on the middle east is a bad idea). It is good too see smart(er) tactical decisions get made on the ground despite a terrible (and now reiterated) strategic view, though. Democracy is Americans’ _only_ conceptual framework. Therefore, when we’re dealing with the world, the only rhetoric we have is democratize-the-world rhetoric. Even when we recognize in practical terms that democracy is not suitable or possible, as seems thankfully to be the case now in Iraq, we are still only able to describe what we’re doing in terms of democracy. So there is this complete bifurcation between our liberal, democratist ideology on one hand and political reality on the other. Our ideology forces us to be hypocritical, as well as unbearably hectoring. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on November 19, 2003 11:36 AMThe way he spoke of our enemies was: “And by advancing freedom in the greater Middle East, we help end a cycle of dictatorship and radicalism that brings millions of people to misery and brings danger to our own people.” As for the Palestinians, Bush spoke of “the heart of the matter, which is the need for a viable Palestinian democracy…. Even after the setbacks and frustrations of recent months, goodwill and hard effort can bring about a Palestinian state and a secure Israel…. Israel should freeze settlement construction, dismantle unauthorized outposts, end the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people, and not prejudice final negotiations with the placements of walls and fences.” This, by the way, proves (to the extent that any general statement of sentiments and goals by Bush proves anything) that he was not being Macchiavellian when he did the absurd “road map”; he wasn’t going the extra mile as a way of showing the world once and for all that the “peace process” doesn’t and can’t work. No—he believed in it and still believes in it, even though it broke down almost as soon as it started and the PLO prime minister Abbas had to resign for fear of his life from other Palestinians, and also led to more mass murders and maimings of Israelis. Bush is still pushing “peace process,” still telling the Israelis not to put up “fences” vital for their safety, the whole thing. So, at least on the level of his public rhetoric (which matters greatly, because it establishes what he sees as right and wrong, true and false), he’s learned nothing. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on November 19, 2003 2:30 PMRumors of a speeded up pull out may be a political maneuver to get democrats to object, thus taking the issue of “why aren’t we out of Iraq” off the table for 2004. In any case, Bush continues with not only neocon, but now outright Wilsonian rhetoric. Posted by: thucydides on November 19, 2003 5:19 PMA few questions: If, after June 2004, the U.S. maintains a “military presence” in Iraq, won’t those troops still be sitting ducks, and won’t the nightly body bags still frustrate Bush’s re-election campaign? Also, won’t those troops, under greater and greater attack, either have to escalate back to the level where they are now, suffering all the present problems, OR pull out totally, leaving the new Iraq to fall into the waiting embrace of al-Qaeda and other hostile forces? Will the fall of the new Iraq back into tyranny be good for the Bush campaign? Won’t that fall mean that the Allied War was nothing more than an expensive military exercise that allowed for the field testing of new weapons?
Mr. Raymond is partially correct. On one hand, I would say that a greater degree of intelligence/intelligibility seems to have come into our Iraq policy. This policy is a definite improvement over what we had before because now the emphasis is on putting an effective leader in place who can defend Iraq, not on building “democracy.” But on the other hand, as Mr. Raymond points out, that approach still doesn’t address the underlying challenge and dilemma of our mission there. Success means putting a government in place that can sustain its own existence, but what will be necessary to achieve that success? Namely, what will be necessary to suppress and defeat the insurgents? I don’t think anyone has a definite answer to that question at this point. The improvement is that now we are being somewhat more realistic about the challenges we face, where as the total focus on “democracy” seemed an escape from reality. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on November 19, 2003 7:14 PMI think it should also be pointed out that the Germans and Japanese were relatively high-IQ populations that had had varying degrees of liberalism (in the good sense of the word, not in the sense of leftism) at points in their history before World War II. They were also ethnically relatively homogenous and had formed as countries naturally (i.e. internally) rather than having a far-away foreign power place a number of disparate ethnic groups into artificial borders. I personally would analogize attempting to democratize Iraq to attempting to create a single democratic state out of Israel and Jordan (including the West Bank and Gaza). Posted by: Michael Jose on March 31, 2004 11:55 PM |