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Election workers count ballots in Basra following national election, January 30, 2005 (Reuters photo). |
After decades of playing a cautious role as a status quo power in the Middle East, the United States, jarred by the September 11 terrorist attacks, has become an active force for democratic reform in the Middle East and the broader Muslim world. The Bush administration quickly liberated Afghanistan from the brutal repression of the Taliban regime allied with Osama bin Laden in late 2001 and has supported the establishment of democracy in that long-suffering country. Few Afghans doubt that they are better off today than they were before the US intervention, when the Taliban banned women from working outside their homes and denied them education, jailed men for not having long enough beards, and massacred Afghan Shiites.
| Even longtime opponents of US policy in the Middle East were impressed by the drive for democracy in Iraq. |
The war in Iraq has been controversial. But a majority of Iraqis believe they are better off after being freed of Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship, which drove more than one million Iraqis out of the country, used chemical weapons against its own people, massacred tens of thousands of rebellious Shiites after the 1991 Gulf War, and dumped an estimated 300,000 Iraqis into mass graves. Saddam also invaded Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990. If the number of Iranian and Kuwaiti deaths is added to the Iraqi death toll, Saddam Hussein personally was responsible for the deaths of more Muslims than anyone since the Mongol leader Hulagu Khan in the 13th century.
Today Iraq is a dangerous place in large part because of the ruthless attacks of Baathist diehards seeking to restore their dictatorship and those of Islamic extremists seeking to violently impose a new kind of dictatorship. The United States has spent considerable blood and treasure in trying to help Iraqis build a stable, democratic government. Iraqis have made considerable progress, as evidenced by the January 30 elections and the writing of the new constitution, but much remains to be done. If the United States withdraws its forces quickly, as some have suggested, Iraq’s embryonic democracy will be stillborn and the country is likely to plunge into a civil war that can claim the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis.
While many Muslims have understandably been appalled by the violence that has plagued Iraq, many have also been inspired by the sight of courageous Iraqi voters defying the anti-democratic insurgents and risking their lives to vote in free elections for the transitional government. Many Arabs, long told by repressive governments that they could not afford the luxury of democracy until Israel had been destroyed, were stirred not only by the Iraqi elections, but also by the Palestinian presidential election in January. The Bush administration has played a strong role in pushing for both elections.
Even longtime opponents of American policy in the Middle East, such as Lebanese leader Walid Jumblatt, were impressed by the drive for democracy in Iraq. Jumblatt, a persistent critic of the United States, told a reporter, “It’s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq.” Jumblatt admitted, “I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.” Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading: “The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.”(1)
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| President Bush addresses the National Endowment for Democracy, November 2003. |
True, the Bush administration did not go to war in Iraq solely, or even primarily, because of a desire to bring democracy there. Saddam’s failure to convince UN weapons inspectors that his regime had destroyed its extensive chemical weapons stocks and long-range missiles, and dismantled its biological and nuclear weapons development programs, as required under the terms of the cease-fire that ended the 1991 Gulf War, was the primary motivating factor for Washington. After 9/11, when Muslim extremists turned hijacked airliners into weapons of mass destruction, the United States could no longer afford to trust in the restraint of a leader who had used illegal chemical weapons to kill thousands of his own people and tens of thousands of Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war. President Bush firmly followed through on his pledge to keep the world’s most dangerous weapons out of the hands of one of the world’s most bloodthirsty tyrants.
The trauma of 9/11 also led the Bush administration to make a long-term commitment to encourage democratic reform outside of Iraq. In a November 2003 speech, President Bush declared that “sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East” had failed to contain security threats emanating from the region and announced that the United States had adopted a new “forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East.” The United States and its European allies subsequently drafted a plan, the Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI), to promote democratic political reform and free-market economic reforms in the region. The GMEI, which will funnel considerably more foreign aid to the region, also has stimulated local governments and reform movements to develop and debate their own reform proposals.
| “The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity.” |
This American drive for democracy has led to tensions with some of its longtime friends in the Middle East, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice postponed a visit to Egypt, one of America’s closest and most important Muslim allies, until the Mubarak’s government released an imprisoned pro-democracy activist. The subsequent release of Ayman Nour and President Mubarak’s promise to open up the presidential election to greater competition are small but important steps on the road to democracy.
This is not to suggest that the United States alone can or should impose democracy, or even that it is the prime mover behind democratic reforms in the Muslim world. There has long been a pent-up demand for greater democracy and government accountability in many Muslim countries. But under Bush, the United States has taken a more active role in encouraging and assisting democratic reformers while pressuring numerous governments to allow greater political participation by their own citizens. Washington recognizes that the hard work of democratic reform must be done primarily by the people of the region and cannot be compelled from abroad. Bush acknowledged this in his 2003 state of the union speech when he said, “The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity.” The United States cannot bestow what is not its to give. It can only assist reformers in the region to attain their own goals, not force them to pursue American goals.
For taking risks to advance democracy, Bush has been criticized as overly idealistic by many Americans, including some conservatives, who doubt that the Middle East is hospitable terrain for democracy and freedom. Bush rejected this criticism in a November 2003 speech at the National Endowment for Democracy: “Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom, and never even to have a choice in the matter? I, for one, do not believe it. I believe every person has the ability and the right to be free.”(2)
This conviction is shared by many Muslims in the Middle East and beyond. Aware of this, the Arab League, which has never been a bastion of democracy, issued, in May, the first multilateral pledge for domestic reform in the organization’s history. The Arab League’s 22 member states unanimously passed a resolution expressing commitment to “democratic practice,” freedom of expression, and women’s rights. Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher said, “A year ago, reform was not even on the radar screen of most Arab countries.” Muasher adds, “Today the debate has moved from defining the elements of reform to how to implement it.”(3)
The United States cannot claim all the credit for the democratic winds of change that now blow through the Middle East, but it deserves more credit than it is accorded by many Muslim critics, especially those opposed to democracy. Some argue that the Bush administration’s democratic rhetoric is merely a means of rationalizing the use of force to advance American interests. This charge ignores the history of American military interventions in the last 15 years.
In 1991, the United States fought a war to liberate Kuwaiti Muslims from Iraqi occupation and today Kuwait is free, independent, and moving to give its citizens greater democracy. In 1993, the first Bush administration committed American troops to an emergency humanitarian aid effort to feed starving Somali Muslims. Although the food airlift was a success, the Clinton administration’s subsequent expansion of the mission to a full-fledged nation-building exercise under UN auspices was a tragic failure. The UN also failed in Bosnia. In 1996, the United States led the NATO intervention to protect Bosnian Muslims from Serbian attacks. In 1999, American military forces spearheaded the liberation of Kosovo’s Muslims from Serbian domination. In every one of these cases, Muslims benefited from American military intervention.
The Afghans and Iraqis stand to benefit greatly also, after having finally uprooted the remnants of the Taliban and Baathist dictatorships that formerly oppressed them. Muslims should support these democratic efforts, which have replaced violent regimes that repressed their own people and exported terrorism.
The United States has pledged to help rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq, just as it rebuilt Germany and Japan after World War II, replacing aggressive regimes with democracies that did not threaten their neighbors or their own people. But while the United States can play a supporting role, it is ultimately up to the people of each country to design and sustain democratic political systems that conform to their own needs, culture, and ideals.
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