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More twists and turns from the democracy supporters
Our goal in Iraq keeps changing, but, whatever it changes into, the neocons and Bush supporters remain equally heart-swollen over it. Before the new war aim can be blessed and sanctified, however, the former war aim must be dropped into the memory hole. Thus Powerline quotes the final paragraph of a “must-read” piece by Reuel Marc Gerecht, which starts off like this:
Iraq and Afghanistan as liberal beacons in the region never really made much sense;Oh, really? Then what has been all the dancing in the streets and the weeping in joy and “the exhilaration of freedom” that the Bush supporters have indulged in like drunks at a wedding every time there’s been an Iraqi election or the slightest glimmer of some “democratic” change anywhere in the region? “See, oh, see, how democracy is spreading across the Mideast!” they’ve cried every time there was a demonstration in Lebanon, complete with its own instant designer name, “the Cedar Revolution,” or an announcement of some piddling state-controlled election for the Egyptian powerless parliament, which ended up electing the Muslim Brotherhood. Pace Gerecht, not only did the entire Bush crew believe that Iraq and Afghanistan were liberal beacons for the entire region; they believed it with all their heart. But now that things are not shaping up as they assured us they would, and now that they’ve run out of excuses, they’re turning around and saying that they never really believed that Iraq would become the generating heart of Mideast freedom in any case! As Hamlet said to Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, it is as easy as spin doctoring. Ok, so, if freedom (i.e. liberalism as distinct from mere elections) is no longer in the offing (and it’s impossible to argue seriously that it is in the offing when orthodox Shi’ites are coming to power in Iraq under a sharia constitution), what is? Gerecht continues:
Afghanistan and Iraq are at present the Muslim world’s two most important democratic laboratories…. [F]or devout Muslims who are trying to introduce concepts of popular sovereignty into political philosophy, both nations are—and the word is used correctly—progressive. This may be hard for many secularized or disbelieving Westerners and Middle Easterners to swallow—“We have gone to war for this?”—but in the context of Middle Eastern history, we should be both hopeful and proud. [Italics added.]So, Iraq and Afghanistan are not democracies; they are democratic laboratories. But I remember in January 2005 when the entire Bush chorus was chanting that Iraq was “now a democracy” because it had had an election. Now Iraq has been changed into a “laboratory” where Muslims are “trying to introduce concepts of popular sovereignty.” From a new-born democracy to a “laboratory” where people are trying to introduce “concepts”—that’s what I call progress! But seriously, if it’s just a laboratory, are toasts and celebrations (“What a remarkable election”) really in order? Is a very uncertain experiment, the results of which must be years off, an appropriate object for singing and dancing, for pride and hope? Well, why not? America is an “experiment,” too, according to the neocons, and they are always singing and dancing about that. Finally, what does Gerecht mean when he speaks of the “many secularized or disbelieving Westerners” who have difficulty understanding the wonder of the exploding laboratory we’ve created in Iraq? What does being a religious Christian or Jew have to do with a person’s ability to grasp the wondrous democratic experiment in Iraq? The only way to make sense of this bizarre phrase is that he means secular and disbelieving in relation to Bush’s policy. Bush’s policy is a religion, therefore those who don’t agree with it are secular unbelievers. Gerecht thus seems to be harking back to David Gelernter’s demented article in Commentary a year ago in which he announced that “Americanism”—meaning the Bush policy of global democratization—is now a “Judeo-Christian religion.”
These people are plainly unhinged, and getting more so all the time. They are seeing their own ideas being enacted on the stage of the world, and are getting their jollies off on the process, but the results are always dramatically different from what they so confidently promised, and in fact they have no sense of what they are doing other than tirelessly doctoring their spin to adjust to each new disappointment. They need adult supervision. But where would it come from? Inside the administration, Vice President Cheney, the supposed wise old man of the crew, has turned into a cranky ideologue. Among the neocons, Pope Norman Podhoretz is himself the generating heart of that group’s aggressive narcissism. I see no source from which the needed check on their hubris could come, except the continuing failures of their own policy. Email entry |