Does democracy end terrorism? Does fighting terror advance democracy?

The blogger Chris Roach, who admires me on Mondays and Wednesdays, and attacks me on Tuesdays and Thursdays, often for the silliest reasons (e.g., I criticized the record of Pope John Paul II before he was buried, which, Roach says, makes me a “liberal”), gives me credit for a cogent insight about the Iraq war which in fact had not occurred to me but is his own thought:

Lawrence Auster raises an interesting point: namely, that our democratization strategy in Iraq and the stated strategy of fighting terrorists there to avoid fighting them at home may work at cross-purposes to one another. The latter statement may reasonably be read to mean that we’ve deliberately turned their country into a war-zone and their people into cannon fodder to protect ourselves …

My point was, and I think it remains, is that it undermines the goal of democratization if we deliberately enter Iraq to transform the country into a terror-magnet and a battlefield, and that it doubly undermines the democratization goal if we say so publicy. Perhaps we should have all along viewed this thing as a punitive expedition and not expressed such effusive concern for the Iraqis and their future, but we have done so.

Now this is interesting. In the wake of the London suicide bombings by Moslems born in the democratic West, various writers including myself have underscored the obvious but insufficiently understood point that living in a democracy is not necessarily the cure for terrorism, and, in fact, may help nurture a terrorist mentality. But Roach (though incorrectly crediting me for the idea) has raised the converse point, that fighting terrorism is not necessarily the way to foster democratization, and may, in fact preclude it. If our terror-fighting strategy is to turn Iraq into a magnet for terrorists, so that “we fight them there instead of here,” and thus to make that country the locus of a years-long terror war (Rumsfeld said up to 12 years, but it could just as well be 20 years or 50), that obviously makes the creation of any kind of stable democratic government in Iraq extremely problematic.

So democracy does not end terrorism but may nurture it, and fighting terrorism (at least President Bush’s way of doing it in Iraq) does not advance democracy but may make it impossible.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 20, 2005 08:33 PM | Send