Powerline modifies stand on blessings of Muslim democracy

In response to Diana West’s column last week on the actual results of Mideast democracy, Powerline is saying that democracy is not a panacea. Unless I’m dreaming, that’s sure not the way that staunchly pro-Bush website has sounded for the last couple of years. Powerline saves the Bush position by distinguishing between terrorism and a presumptively non-terrorist hardline Orthodox sharia Islamic state. But that little adjustment, while it may (for the moment) handle the embarassment of democracy empowering religious Shi’ites in Iraq, does not handle the problem of democracy empowering Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the PA territories, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Here is the Powerline piece with my comments interspersed:

Diana West, in an important column, questions whether President Bush is correct about the transformative powers of the democratic process. Noting the apparent success of the Shi’ite Muslim religious coalition in the recent Iraqi elections, as well as electoral developments in Egypt and among Palestinians, West disputes Bush’s claim that “the terrorists know that democracy is their enemy.”

West is correct that we should not consider democracy to be a short or mid-term panacea in the Middle East. [Does this mean that democracy is a “long-term” panacea?] And I agree that it’s unrealistic to believe that elections hold much promise of reducing Palestinian terror against Israel. [Has Powerline always believed this? Or is it reversing its previous position which included support for Bush’s idea that Palestinian democracy is the road to peace? If the latter, shouldn’t Powerline be informing its readers of that fact?] Additionally, in the current environment we should not expect secular-style democracies to emerge from elections in the Middle East. [Is this what Powerline has been saying all along? In fact, until the sharia constitution emerged last summer, the solid assumption of the whole pro-Bush camp was that our policy there was leading to a democracy that included women’s equality, tolerance of minorities, and so on, i.e., a secular, liberal democracy.]

But that’s not to say that terrorists (Palestinian terrorists excepted) are wrong to view democracy as their enemy. Voting for an illiberal religious party is not the same as voting for terrorism. No population has any incentive to vote for those who would engage in domestic terrorism. And no population has much of an incentive to vote for those who would promote international terrorism, thereby risking sanctions or military retaliation. [Why does Powerline get to make this huge exception for the Palestinians? They’re using democracy to advance parties devoted to the use of terrorism to destroy Israel. In any case, the Palestinians are not the only exception. Iran has repeatedly elected regimes that support external terror. Its recently elected president has threatened the mass extermination of Israel. So where is the proof that democracy by its very nature is against terrorism?]

West points out that the apparent winners in the Iraqi election have “alarmingly close ties to the terror masters of Iran.” Events may prove me wrong, but I don’t expect Iraqi Shi’ites to vote themselves into a close alliance with Iranian terror masters unless security concerns with respect to the Sunnis induce them to. That won’t happen if the U.S. is in the picture or if American-trained Iraqi security forces can do the job. Nor would I expect an Iraqi Shi’ite dominated government to ask the U.S. to leave, and then turn to the Iranians for protection against the Sunnis. Sistani and other Iraqi Shi’ite leaders seem clever enough to distrust the Iranians; nor, regardless of religion, can it be all that tempting for a dominant faction in one sovereign state to embrace a subservient role with respect to an aggressive neighboring state, if that faction has other options. [The reasoning in this paragraph has nothing to do with whether democracy is inherently against terrorism, but focuses only on contingencies in Iraq that may prevent democracy from leading to terror in that country under present political circumstances.]

Democracy is certainly no guarantee against terrorism, and it would be an unwise anti-terrorism strategy to sieze control of sovereign states for the purpose of promoting democracy. But having invaded Iraq for other reasons, it’s wise for us to promote democracy there for a number of reasons. One is that the promise of a democratic future is better than what the Iraqi terrorists are offering. Another is that a democratic Iraq poses less of a danger of future terrorism than a non-democratic Iraq. [While this is a more modest and reasonable way of arguing for President Bush’s position, Bush himself has said that we must stay in Iraq or else Al Qaeda will take over the country. That possibility, while Bush may have exaggerated it, did not exist at all prior to our attempt to democratize Iraq. So again it would appear, even from Bush’s own statements, that the pursuit of democracy, far from defeating terrorists, has empowered them.]

A reader adds:

They should be forced to define the kind of “democracy” they believe is being created. It’s not secular or liberal democracy, Powerline says. So what is it? Let’s force these people to define and qualify this all-encompassing term, democracy. Then they won’t be able to shift gears all of a sudden, and deny what everyone thought they originally meant.

Since Powerline has asked not to receive any more mailings from VFR, they will be deprived of the critical questions that have been raised here. To bad for them. They are, as I’ve said, intelligent guys, but they are locked into a conventional, neoconservative mindset and a pro-Bush political commitment that prevents them from thinking clearly through these issues.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 26, 2005 01:15 PM | Send