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On the road to democracy without Bush
This is the dumbest opinion piece I've read in a long time. President Bush takes credit for democracy in the Middle East. Maybe he's been the biggest obstacle in the way.
Start with Iran. But for our long buildup to the Iraq war, it's Iran that might have been the world's next great democracy.
| But they probably wouldn't be, since they've been fiddling with "democracy" since 1979 and the best they've been able to come up with is a theocracy, kinda like the Papal States, only with oil and a hankering for nuclear weapons... |
When Bush came into office in 2000, Iran had already put in Mohammad Khatami, the moderate cleric, as president.
| Note that Khatami was a cleric, not a shopkeeper or a football star or even a rug magnate. He was part of the theocratic system, and as a politician he was ineffective on the order of Aleksandr Karensky. |
By 2002 when Khatami did not deliver, the secular democrats broke with him and went into the streets. Student strikes went on through 2003. Kids were reading "Lolita in Tehran." Here was a chance for a Czech-like "Velvet Revolution."
| It was also a nice opportunity for the Iranian Hezbollah to crack some heads, an opportunity they weren't long in taking... |
Bush's buildup to war blasted it away.
| Or it might have been the head cracking. Generally people observe military buildups from a distance and wonder what's going to happen next. With a club applied between the eyes, they observe the effects close up and they're not left wondering... |
While we rounded up Iraqis, Iranian mullahs had a kind of license to do the same. Maybe I am wrong and the theocrats in Iran could have repressed the students and liberals.
| I think we could just about guarantee that they would have, since they're not willing to give up power without a fight, and they've got a pretty large stable of hard boyz willing to do it... |
But what might have happened in Iran if Bush hadn't popped off and invaded Iraq? No one can say for sure, but the liberals might have won.
| I might have gotten slender, too. And my hair might have grown back. And Patty Ann Brown might have called me up for a date. Now put a percentage of probability on each of those statements. Dumbass. |
Imagine, if there were now a secular democracy in Iran, as there had been in the 1950s, the impact on Iraq and the entire Middle East?
| Yes. Imagine a nation ruled by Torquemada turning over power to the hoi polloi. Happens all the time, doesn't it? |
Of course, a brutal war in Iraq was the end of a non-violent movement in Iran.
| It was the end of a violent movement in Iraq... |
War or the threat of war usually justifies repression. In India, World War II was a gift to the British: It gave them cover to jail Jawaharlal Nehru, an Indian politician and statesman of great skill.
| ... who was not, keep in mind, on their side. |
Our invasion of Iraq was a gift to the mullahs, at least in two ways. First, it gave the mullahs justification in cracking down at home. Second, it had a chilling effect on Iranians who might have otherwise gone into the streets. After all, Bush had made clear that Iran might be next.
| Since Bush made it clear that Iran might be next, wouldn't that — assuming a world populated by people at least half of whom possess 3-digit IQs — constitute a further pressure on the Medes and the Persians to drop the autos da fe, the stonings and the hangings, and suddenly discover in the Koran that the Prophet used to spend his time sitting around with his followers, listening to their opinions and often modifying his own based on their specialized input? In fact, there was likely a 50-50 chance that just sort of a thing might have happened; half the population is reputed to have 3-digit IQs, the other half being stuck with 2-digits. Had the 3-digit bloc been in power, the results would likely have been different than they have been. It's just a further illustration of that fact that people don't always act in their reasonable self-interest. |
Here was our message to the Iranians: "We're coming. We want to make your lives better. But first we'll have to kill you."
| Lousy phrasing, dumbass. Try "We're coming. We want to make your lives better. But first we'll have to hang the ayatollahs. Try not to get in the way." |
What did Bush think would happen in Iran?
| Toldja: It could have gone either way. |
It's hard to have a revolution that is orange or velvet if the rivers next door have started running red.
| So we shoulda left Sammy in power, on the assumption that the ayatollahs would eventually give up their Evil ways and become really, really nice fellows? Thank you for your opinion, Neville. All our policy analyst positions are filled at the moment, but leave a copy of your resume and we'll be sure to get back to you if something opens up. |
OK, we blew Iran. But aren't the elections in Iraq equally good?
| Just dandy, I'd say. But I'm sure you won't... |
No, they're not as good.
First, a non-violent movement in Iran would have built up the secular liberals. Our war in Iraq has tainted them instead. Second, democracy will come sooner if we just stay out of it. We shouldn't play God and say where democracy should start.
| Nobody else was playing God, Neville. Democracy wasn't starting. In fact, people were whimpering about destroying the "stability" of the Muddle East — a "stability" that was built on tin-hat Mussolini-style dictators, Torquemada-style holy men, secret police, religious police, and all the other unwholesome trappings we've come to know and love in our examination of the area for the past four years. By the way, Neville, when did you notice the Muddle East? |
All the great outbreaks of democracy in our time have been velvet ones; some so velvet we forget that they happened. For example, Spain and Greece in the 1970s: They went democratic with little or no help from us. It is less the U.S. than the European Union that has inspired the great democratic movements of our time.
| My breath! It's taken away! Franco remained in power until he died of old age. Had he raised up a Franco, Jr., Spain would likely still be ruled by fascisti. But he mellowed in his old age and designated Juan Carlos as his successor. Greece in the 1970s was ruled by colonels, if I remember correctly — our source of Greek minutiae doesn't comment here anymore — and were pretty much pressured into turning over power. Neville ignores the attempts of the East Germans (1948), Hungarians (1956) and Czechs (1968) at their own "velvet revolutions." With only EU-style support, they not only flopped, but the results included piles of dead bodies. That's because we didn't help; we just stood by and supplied lots of EU-style good wishes. In those places where we continue to supply EU-style good wishes, like Zim-bob-we, the populace remains oppressed and often starving. |
At any rate, it is coming, whether we will it or not. It will come if only from rising gross domestic product per capita. Or it will come if only from the spread of education. Of course there is going to be democracy in the Middle East. And our role ought to be to not screw it up.
| We're not necessarily going to see democracy in the Muddle East. The Taliban had to be tossed out on their collective ear and are still trying to return. Sammy had to be tossed out on his collective ear; otherwise he'd have remained in power until he died of old age and he would have turned power over to Uday and Qusay and Company. The Soddy Princes intend on remaining in power until the last of them is dead from old age, and they intend to pass on power to yet another generation of little Sods. Muammar has no intention of relinquishing power; he'll die of old age, or more likely senile dementia, and turn power over to Saif al-Islam, who might have the good sense to become an elder statesman at the age of 40 or so, as long as there are lots of dancing girls to entertain him. The remainder of the Muddle East is lurching toward democracy while the Muslim Brotherhood stands athwart the tracks of history reading their Korans and providing guidance for the international terror machine. |
But that's exactly what Bush has gone about doing. Consider the Palestinians.
It now seems they were restless under the late Yasser Arafat. But by the way Bush barked at the Palestinians, he did a lot to ensure that Arafat stayed. Bush now seems to take credit for Palestinian democracy. It might have come sooner but he was in the way.
| Bush "barked" at the Paleostinians? By refusing to deal with Yasser? By demanding reforms? By demanding elections? By meeting with the "Quartett" — consisting of the UN, the EU and the Russers — to come up with an even-handed "roadmap" that Hamas used as buttwipe? The only way Paleostinian democracy would have come sooner would have been in Yasser had died sooner, but if we'd helped him on his way it wouldn't have come at all. Yasser's another one who died of old age while the EU extended good wishes in the general direction of his downtrodden populace. |
The same is true of Lebanon.
| How long were the Syrians there, Neville? |
It is not Iraq but Ukraine that is inspiring secular liberals to go into the streets. How could it be Iraq? Look at the corporate types who are marching. They want latte, not war. It's Ukraine that makes them think they can win with non-violence.
| And it's Iraq that sez that's not always possible. You can have all the good wishes in the world, but that's not going to rid you of a Saddam Hussein — or of a Hafiz Assad. Ridding them of Leonid Kuchma was a close-run thing. |
That's what the Bush people fail to grasp: It's non-violence that, in our time, puts the fire in men's minds.
| What Neville fails to grasp is that diplomacy without the underlying threat of force is nothing but a mutual passing of gas... |
Now that Bush is threatening Syria, he has gotten a half million pro-Syrians into the streets.
| And they weren't there before? Is anyone besides Neville surprised that there's a large Syrian-controlled fifth column in Lebanon? Bueller? |
Ukraine, by the way, happened without us, though Bush may soon be taking credit for it too.
| I don't think it happened without us. Dick Morris was with the Yushchenko people. I'm sure there were other political consultants, probably some of them paid by certain U.S. government agencies... |
He shouldn't. The "Orange Revolution" owes much more to the soft power of the European Union than the hard power of the U.S. The EU sent in the mediators. While America has the Army, it is really the EU that has been getting the results. At any rate, there'd be no democracy in Ukraine if we had been bombing Belarus.
| If there had been an uprising against Lukaschenko and we'd provided military support to help run him out of town, likely somebody would have come up with the idea of getting rid of Kuchma the same way. But it didn't happen that way. |
Yes, I believe Bush wants to get rid of tyrants. Still, when he came into office, it seemed the reverse. First, we withdrew from the International Criminal Court. Second, Bush's people went on and on about how the U.S. would act only and exclusively in its own national interest. Of course, that's what most countries do. It's what liberals like Franklin D. Roosevelt did. But they aren't such fools to talk the way Bush did. With or without Bush, freedom is on the march, for reasons that have nothing to do with us. It's coming into the world. Let's not screw it up.
(By Thomas Geoghegan, a Chicago lawyer and the author of "In America's Court.")
The formula: ignore history and recent events so that Bush can't get any credit.
| Neville is obviously the kind of man who can read an O. Henry story and say "I don't get it." |
Posted by: Spot 2005-03-28 |
