California Yankee notes that democracy is a strategic interest for the United States.
Of course it is. Democracies rarely to go war with each other and, while they do sometimes produce terrorists, they tend not to produce massive networks of them, and the terrorist networks they produce tend to be more easily penetrated. The only real exception I can think of is Northern Ireland's IRA, and most students of that organization acknowledge that it once received considerable funding from totalitarian sources such as the Soviet Union, and has nowhere near the power today that it did in its heyday.
If you doubt that the expansion of democracy is both healthy and strategically valuable for all free peoples, I suggest spending some time at the R.J. Rummel's Freedom, War, and Democracy pages, which are thoroughly researched and often surprising.
Oh, and by the way, if you honestly believe that Islamic societies are honestly incapable of reform and freedom, I suggest you read this Atlantic Monthly piece, and also contemplate that despite all the hoo-raw over our minor setbacks in Iraq, local elections have been taking place all throughout that country, quietly and with little fanfare.
"Democracy" may indeed be a strategic interest of the United States overseas. But I doubt that we shall achieve much of that in Iraq under present circumstances.
In order for "democracy" to work as it does in the English-speaking world, western and central Europe, and in parts (but not all) of the hispanic American states, stability is required. Where armed paramilitary groups exist, such as the communists and nazis in the German Weimar republic of 1918-1933, even a written democratic constitution will not keep the country either free, stable or democratic.
The goal of the United States in Iraq is to create a democratic and stable society. But it is evident that the Bush administration, in announing those goals, is now working as rapidly and openly as possible to reduce the role of our armed forces there in combat with the armed gangs that infest the country.
Instead, the focus now is turning over civil power to an Iraqi government, under which our troops there would no longer be an occupation force but would devolve to the status of a guest force that would help prop up and sustain the new government. That, presumably, would reduce daily US casualty counts well in time for the November 2004 election. And in so doing, would remove some of the political pressure presently building against the Bush administration not only from the Democrats but even from Republicans.
Many of us hope that strategy shall succeed, both for Bush, the United States, and even the people of Iraq.
But success in erecting a fig-leaf should not be confused with a major strategic victory in the multiple struggles with the wahhabists, baathists and other Arab and islamic grand-scale trouble makers. The reasons are as follows:
1) Iraq is an inherently unstable society comprising three mutually hostile communities, one of which, the Kurds, is not even Arabic-speaking, and a second of which, the shi'a, has had bitter, bloody and hateful relations with the dominant sunna community since shortly after the rise of Islam.
Multinational states just barely work in societies such as Belgium (Walloons vs Flemish), Canada (Quebecois vs English-speaking), and South Africa (Xhosas vs Zulus vs Afrikaaners vs Anglos), and indeed, the United States of America (European white vs African black vs Latino vs east Asian). The more typical example, however, are countries such as former Jugoslavia (Serbs vs Croats vs Slovenes vs Makedonci vs Albanci vs Bosna muslimanni), Rwanda (Tutsis vs Hutus), Sri Lanka (Hindus vs Tamils), Lebanon (christians vs muslims), Cyprus (Greeks vs Turks), and Northern Ireland (Catholics vs Protestants). United nations, indeed.
2) As cited above, Iraq is dominated not by a single government but by a collection of armed, occasionally murderous, mutually hostile and totally independent armed gangs, each with its own national or power-derivative agenda. Two such groups dominate Iraqi Kurdestan. One such group, the Baathists, still predominate in the sunn'a community of Iraq. At least one, but probably more armed gangs run the Shi'a part of the country.
The United States had the military capability of getting a solid start in destroying the militias during the siege of Fallujah. But the Bush administration flinched in the face of possible largescale civilian deaths if it held its course and destroyed the Baathist militia holed up there. The US has flinched likewise in dealing with the separate and hostile imams of the shi'a (Hakim, Sistani, Sadr, Fartusi) and their armed militias. The result of this continuing inability to disarm the various nationally-based militias of Iraq means that the new civil government of that country will be as weak and unstable as its counterpart in Lebanon. The unpleasant fact is that Iraq was probably a much more stable state under Saddam Hussein than it is ever going to be under the US, Britain and our local Iraqi collaborators.
3) The residents of all islamic states, with the possible exception of Turkey, live under the forced combination of islamic relgious law and islamic civil law. Other than under Mustafa Kemal's revolution in Turkey in the 1920s which separated the two, there is neither any cultural nor historical precedent for separation of mosque and state in any islamic society. In fact, efforts to achieve such separation and to maintain governments committed to modernization as opposed to islamization within the past quarter-century have led to serious civil disturbances in Egypt and Algeria and to the overthrow of a western-oriented government in Iran and its replacement with the Khomeini and his successors. But such separation of religion and state is in fact one of the very fundaments of democracy as practiced everywhere.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Look, democracy has very little chance in muslim countries, and nothing Bernard Lewis says gives assurance otherwise. As A. Harris points out above, Islam does not allow for the separation of a secular civil society, free from interference from power hungry mullahs and imams.
Muslim clerics in all muslim countries are acquiring a taste for power, and Islamic theory justifies their power grab. Most muslims are uneducated and poor, and will never have the ego strength to go against the imams wishes.
There is one hope--western feminists need to unite in liberating their muslim sisters. Once liberated, muslim women will drastically reduce their birthrates, and thus reduce the number of expendable jihadists.
I know why folks say that Islam is incompatible with democracy and Iraq perhaps moreso due to the ethnic hostilities perpetually demonstrated but I don't think the circumstances are significantly worse than they were in Turkey, Indonesia or India before advances there. Bold declarations of impossibility are simply conjectural. Such doom-mongering was aimed at the American colonies needless to say. I'm optimistic.
There are, of course, multiple Muslim democracies already. And there are countless Muslims who advocate democracy. Elections are of course already taking place in Iraq and going well.
Empirical facts being what they are, I tend to be more sanguine than others.
Megapotamus and Dean,
I respect both your opinions. But I think you both can expect future disappointment from what is likely to occur in Iraq. Or it might be more apt to say you face disappointment from what is NOT likely to occur in Iraq. Unless you shift your expectations to the same degree that the administration continually shifts its policies in that torn-up country.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI