George Bush said yesterday, “We’re spreading the hope of freedom across the broader Middle East.” I notice that it no longer is solely Iraq but “the broader Middle East.” So now it is a universal principle spread out across not just one country but throughout a geographic region and culture.
And if this is the case, then there is a fatal flaw in his aproach. [LA note: Bush has been speaking of the broader Muslim world, not just Iraq, from the start.]
Any all-encompassing principle based on universality in the Middle East has to conform to the Koran BY DEFINITION. That is the basis for any Islamic set of principles “universally” framed for an Islamic region that transcends borders and countries. In this respect, Bush’s “principle of freedom” has virtually no hope of being adopted on a regional, continental basis where Islam is the bedrock of universality. Either his “hope of freedom” wins out or it is subjugated both politically and legally by Islam one way or another. Two universal absolutes cannot culturally and politically co-exist in the same region. Something has got to give.
And since the prevailing psychology is Islamic in the Middle East (and Bush has not changed the mindset or psychology of that region), his “hope of freedom” is a chimera. His spouting of universal principles applicable to an entire region is nonsense!
While I may quibble with you on secondary points, your main point is exactly right. The Muslim world has a belief system which is operative in the entire Muslim world (and makes claims on the rest of the world as well). Bush, without quite realizing it, wants to replace the entire governing idea of the Muslim world with his own governing idea. He doesn’t see his aggressive insistence on Muslim democratization as an existential challenge to Islam that must lead to an apocalyptic conflict between Islam and ourselves. He sees it merely as a form of progress, the steady spread of the truth through a world starved for it.
He believes our beliefs are universal. Not only that, but they are, as he put it in his 2002 National Security Strategy statement, the ONLY universally valid belief system today. Therefore any opposition to his beliefs is just some kind of backwardness that hasn’t caught up yet, or a “nihilism” aimed at stopping freedom, or the work of mere “dead-enders” who don’t stand for anything other than destruction. He doesn’t understand that our enemies also have a universal belief, Islam.
Just as Muhammad believed that any refusal to acknowledge him as the Prophet of Allah was a perverse and evil resistance to the only and final truth, Bush believes that any refusal to go along with his own notion of global liberal freedom is mere mindless or negative resistance, an atavistic reaction of “despair” and “hate” against “hope.” Subscribing to his own universal belief, he cannot allow himself to grasp the fact that Muslims in general and our terrorist enemies in particular have their own specific belief system, because that would mean that his own belief system is not as universal as he thought. If he acknowledged that, then, instead of merely arguing for “hope” and “freedom” against “despair” and “hate,” he would have to say, “There are these other people, these Muslims, who have beliefs to which they are profoundly committed, beliefs that are commanded by their religion, beliefs they must follow on pain of death, beliefs that are irreconcilably different from our own.” Once he acknowledged that, the very basis of his global democratism (as well as his open borders policies) would be gone. So, in order to democratize the Muslims and include them in our universal system, he must deny what they actually are and what they actually believe. He must deny their very existence as Muslims, and instead see them as incomplete or distorted reflections of ourselves. Liberalism is a fantastic narcissism.
By contrast, when Franklin Roosevelt waged war against Nazi Germany, and when Ronald Reagan confronted Soviet Communism, each man knew he was in a fight, a fight against something that was real and that had global claims and ambitions. Each leader acknowledged that for our belief system to win, there was that other belief system that had to lose. Therefore he was serious about the war, whether hot or cold, in which he was engaged. But Bush bizarrely combines the most arrogant universal claims for the rightness of his own belief, with a wimpy fear of naming the enemy. His arrogance has led the U.S. into the hellhole of the Iraqi terror war and has triggered the hostility of much of the world against us, while his wimpiness renders us incapable of actually fighting and winning.
My point here is not to criticize or to propose this policy or that. It is to say that whatever policy we may pursue vis à vis the Islamic world, it must be based on a truthful assessment of what Islam is, not on the ridiculous fantasy that Muslims are basically like us.
Now, some say that Bush doesn’t really believe in Muslim democratization, that it is merely idealistic dressing for cynical realpolitik; or, that if he did believe in it a couple of years ago, he no longer does, because of the endless troubles in Iraq. But, as I’ve said before, what Bush believes in his own mind and heart does not matter. What matters is the beliefs he subscribes to as a political leader, and the effect those beliefs have in shaping society’s beliefs and actions. Certainly Bush’s supporters believe in what he says—and that includes the men who are losing their lives and limbs in Iraq for the sake of those beliefs.