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An objective test for the success of democratization
With the events of the last few days in the Mideast, the Bushites seem to have passed from the overwrought optimism and excitement born of the January 30 Iraqi election into a kind of out-of-the-body ecstasy, as though the Messianic Age had just arrived or the New Jerusalem had just descended from heaven. All over the conservative Web there are unrestrained shouts of triumph: Bush’s democratization is a “success,” democracy is “sweeping” the Mideast, we’re “winning” the war on terror. Well, actually, the Bushites remain curiously silent on the question of terror, even as they keep bubbling about the marvelous success of democratization. In fact, as we shall see in a moment, their omission of any reference to terror turns out to be the key to the problem I’m about to raise. An increasingly irritating aspect of the Bushites is that their claims for the success of democratization seem not to be falsifiable. For example, no matter how many terror attacks occur in Iraq, they answer, “We’ve always known there are enemies of freedom,” or, “Nobody said this would be easy,” or “America had a Civil War.” If it seems Iraqis are about to use democracy to elect a sharia-based government, the Bushites say, “It’s up to the Iraqis to decide what kind of government they will have,” or, “We Americans oppressed blacks and women for centuries, and we have a long way to go before we have true democracy.” Through the use of these elastic standards and definitions, the Bushites can claim success for democratization no matter what is happening on the ground. And when the Bush policy seems to be meeting with some real successes, as it has been this last week with the events in Lebanon and Egypt, the buzz of victory becomes so loud that any kind of critical questioning gets drowned out. Yet there is one test that cannot be so easily ignored or shoved aside. And that is the test of terror. After all, it was to end terror that we embarked on all this democratization, a fact the Bushites seem to have long since forgotten. Here, then, are the sorts of questions that should be asked of the Bushites when they’re in their triumphalist mood: Are we no longer under the threat of terror? Do we no longer have to have our persons examined like criminals when getting on a plane? Do we no longer have to pass through security barriers and x-ray machines to enter public buildings? Is the Patriot Act no longer necessary? Can the Department of Homeland Security be dismantled? Does an Iraqi election not require the total shutting down of the country of Iraq? Does the president’s inaugural not require the virtual shutting down of Washington, D.C. under the largest security blanket in history?
Until the answer to these and similar questions is yes, the war on terror has not been won and is not being won, and therefore democratization has not succeeded in doing what it is touted to do, and therefore the Bushites’ victory dances are premature. When the answer to those questions becomes yes, then, and only then, can we reasonably conclude that democratization has succeeded. Email entry |