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| Should the US support Islamists? |
| 2005-12-03 |
| A debate between Daniel Pipes and Reuel Marc Gerecht. âTo give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government; that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.â âEdmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. Penguin Books: London, 1986, p. 374 [Orig. 1790] âDemocracy is the worst form of government, except for all others that are tried from time to time.â âParaphrase of Winston S. Churchill quote Now more than ever, the question of whether to invite Islamists or curtail their participation in budding Arab democratic elections is critical to the debate over the War on Terror. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has scored stunning victories, gaining â29 more seats in weekend parliamentary runoff electionsâ and as a result âthe organization will control at least five times more seats in the new legislature than it does now.â We are at a crossroads and it is this vital juncture that was addressed last month in a debate between Daniel Pipes and Reuel Marc Gerecht. --Michael Lopez-Calderon The question, âShould the United States support Islamists?â is counterintuitive to conservatives; indeed, it is a question we expect from the defeatist voices of the American Left which makes it all the more astonishing that it was the topic of a debate between Dr. Daniel Pipes and Reuel Marc Gerecht that took place October 24, 2005. Moderated by Ms. Zeyno Baran of The Nixon Center, the debate between the men was civil, informative, and marked by a few moments of profound clarity. One such moment occurred when Marc Plattner of the National Endowment for Democracy asked Dr. Pipes if he considered Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husaini Sistani an Islamist. âSistani is not an Islamist,â according to Dr. Pipes. However, Dr. Pipes warned that the Islamist threat is one that cannot be remedied by a rush to democracy in the Middle East. A different perspective was offered by Mr. Gerecht, who argued that America must be prepared to accept the occasional unacceptable effects of unfettered democratic elections in the Middle East, and we must be prepared to countenance such outcomes now. Mr. Gerecht left a few of us stunned when he stated that should democratic elections in Egypt lead to a legitimately-elected Islamist government, the United States and the West would have to bear this outcome as part of the âdifficult growing painsâ process of democracy.â His central point is that the pro-American Arab governments lack legitimacy, and should elections that bar Islamists occur under the auspices of the U.S., they will be viewed by discontented majorities as illegitimate. Dr. Pipes placed his faith in Middle Eastern strongmen committed to gradual democratic reforms over a twenty- to twenty-five year process; Mr. Gerecht considered delay untenable, counterproductive, and doomed to bitter failure. Distinctions of time and process became the central points of contention between these two men. Mr. Gerecht opened the debate after Ms. Baranâs introductory statements, and he argued that while the U.S. government should not support Islamists, it is inevitable that Islamists are going to triumph in some, perhaps most Middle Eastern countries should full-fledged democratic elections be permitted. He stated âDemocracy in the Middle East is going to be frontloaded, that is, elections first, organic democratic institutions second.â President George W. Bush, though lacking Middle Eastern âexpertise,â was credited by Mr. Gerecht for understanding that the status quo in the Middle East had become dangerously dysfunctional; political extremism necessitates a fundamental change in the U.S. âbusiness as usual approachâ toward undemocratic Arab regimes. Mr. Gerecht warned that the business of building democracy in the Middle East was going to be messy and at times unsatisfactory to U.S. interests; however, we had to accept these possible outcomes â trauma and anti-Americanism â as part of the âfever-breakingâ process of moving from decades of tyranny to lawful, democratically-elected, representative governments. âYou donât get Thomas Jefferson unless youâve had Martin Luther,â said Mr. Gerecht, although he was quick to disclaim Luther as a role model, given the Christian reformerâs legacy of religious wars. Still, according to him, we have to accept the risks and Egypt is one of the linchpins of change. Legitimacy is central to successful electoral processes and the slow formation of democratic culture. A recent AP story of an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood female candidate, Makarem Eldery Ph.D., 55, campaigning for office, reveals the prevailing sentiment among large sectors of Egyptians: ââWe draw our legitimacy from the people. We don't need a despotic regime to recognize us,â she said. âIt's the regime that lacks legitimacy.â" In Gerechtâs view, restricting the participation of Islamists only further endangers Middle Eastern stability as emerging democratic ideas mixed in with older forms of Islamic identity vie to compete in the open market. Driving out Islamists will drive them underground as well as lead large Arab majorities to conclude the electoral process a fraud. âThe Genie is out of the bottle,â said Mr. Gerecht, and if we encourage an Algerian solution âholding elections and then negating their results when they result in the election of Islamic parties, we risk driving Islamists further away from the political process and into armed struggle or terrorism. He added, âAnd we will hit a dead end if we do not open up the process now.â Dr. Pipes cautioned against unfettered democratic elections in which the result could be âone person, one vote, one time.â He outlined the four goals of the radical Islamist agenda: Implement Shariâa as an exclusive system of law; the transformation of personal faith into a radical Utopian ideology, similar to Fascism and Communism; rejection of Western influence by dividing the world into two mutually exclusive camps; the drive to power. The Islamist movement is a unitary one and uses both the violent and nonviolent components as a means to power, said Dr. Pipes. Similar to Italian communists who did the Sovietsâ bidding while posing as nonviolent alternatives to revolutionary communism, the so-called âpeacefulâ Islamists adopt to their immediate environment, argued Dr. Pipes. He made no distinction between the two sides of the same Islamist coin. âAll Islamists are bad,â said Dr. Pipes while the anti-Islamists are fractured and weak. âIslamists are the ones dominating the agendaâ and âBetween 10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide are actively Islamists,â according to Dr. Pipes. However, like the German Nazis, the Islamistsâ will to power, their effectiveness, and the overall weakness of moderate Muslims gives the radicals a level of power that exceeds their actual numbers. Only moderate Muslimsâ resistance to Islamism can lead to a victory over radical Islam, but a premature move to democracy is not the solution, according to Dr. Pipes. He opposed Mr. Gerechtâs proposition by arguing, âYes democracy, but not democracy now.â He invoked a Burkean argument for slow, gradual change declaring that people traumatized by decades of tyranny could not possibly develop democracies while simultaneously under assault by Islamo-fascism. âDemocracy is counter-intuitive. Democracy takes time to learnâŠit is a slow, long deliberative process. By jumping too fast, Islamists âŠgain and we will unfortunately assist our worst enemies to power,â concluded Dr. Pipes. The audience, which included Clifford May (Foundation for the Defense of Democracies), Arnaud de Borchgrave (CSIS), Ambassador Martin Indyk (The Brookings Institution), Daniel Kimmage (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty), Stephen Schwartz (Center for Islamic Pluralism), Fatiha Remh (Embassy of Morocco) and Paul Marshall (Center for Religious Freedom), engaged both men in a question and answer session that lasted nearly ninety minutes. Afterwards I asked Mr. Gerecht about his article âThe Struggle for the Middle East,â (The Weekly Standard, January 10, 2005) that warned that American failure to secure major roadways in Iraq would lead to disaster. He has since become more hopeful, pointing out that the vital Baghdad International Airport road to the capital is safer today than it was six months ago. A recent Washington Post article confirms Mr. Gerechtâs optimism. Dr. Pipes answered my two-fold question about what I call the âX-factorâ, namely, the skittish American public. While both men debated the Middle Eastern response to change, I asked Dr. Pipes if he believed the American public had the patience to endure a potentially decadesâ long conflict, and if American leadership has sufficiently steeled the publicâs resolve. He answered that the American people had the resolve although he acknowledged that âthey do not see the threat the way they saw the Soviet oneâ and that American leadership had done an inadequate job in conveying to the American public the threat posed by radical Islam. Both men agreed on the need to establish democratically-elected, representative governments in the Middle East that are built upon the solid foundations of a written constitution, and that these governments will reflect Middle Eastern and Islamic traditions which the West need not fear nor oppose. As I departed The Nixon Center, Mr. Gerechtâs proposition that we may have to accept an Islamist Egypt bothered me deeply. Islamists in control of the Suez Canal and inheriting fairly modern American weaponry are not comforting thoughts, to say the least. Egyptâs air force alone consists of over 500 combat aircraft including âsixty-seven multi-mission F-16 A/Cs and thirty-three F-4Es from the United States, as well as sixteen Mirage 2000s from France.â Recall that just three years ago, the Bush Administration floated the possibility that Iraqi Unmanned Aerial Vechicles (U.A.V.) could be launched perhaps from terror cargo ships and that these aerial devices could spray a major U.S. city with anthrax, for example. Much of the public scoffed at such views but few would laugh at the prospects of the high-performance F-16, one of the worldâs leading fighter-planes, in the hands of Islamist Kamikaze pilots. After all, the last time Jihadis manned the controls of modern aircraft, they sent an entire nation into shock. Michael Lopez-Calderon is a freelance writer who lives near Washington, D.C. |
| Posted by:The Happy Fliegerabwehrkanonen |