A DEBT THEY CAN NEVER REPAY TO BUSH AND BLAIR:

The way forward: There is a long and hard road ahead if America and Britain are to begin to make amends with the Arab world (Yasir Suleiman, 3/21/04, Sunday Herald)

After decades of indifference and support for authoritarian rule in the Arab lands, US policy-makers have discovered democracy and embraced it as their ultimate goal for a future Middle East, which, it is hoped, will be more prosperous and more ready to interact peacefully with the West. The American administration has dubbed this vision its Greater Middle East policy, which it intends to present to the G8 summit of industrialised countries in the summer. Democratising the Arab world within a Middle East that has been geo-politically expanded to include Afghanistan and Pakistan is the topic of the hour for most Arabs.

There is no doubt that Arabs yearn for a genuine democracy in their countries, but they have responded to the American ideas on democracy, which have been met with traditional political acquiescence from Britain, with a massive dose of cynicism and an impressive array of conspiracy theories. Arabs ask how the Americans and British can be trusted with their future, considering their track record of false promises, brazen disregard for injustice and international legality in Palestine, lies over the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and support in the past for those countries whom they have now found wanting?

Mr. Suleiman seems to have entirely missed the point. We've only stepped in because it became blazingly obvious that the Arabs couldn't be trusted with their own future. Somewhat to our discredit, we preferred indifference...until the bombs started going off. Now we're there helping to democratize the region and asking nothing in return.

MORE:
Beginning to Bloom: The British learned in the 1920s that growing democracy in Iraq takes time. But the U.S. effort there is already showing signs of success. (Joel Rayburn, March 21, 2004, LA Times)

A year ago, troops of the U.S.-led coalition moved into Iraq on their way to swiftly defeating Saddam Hussein's armies. Since then, Iraq's journey toward stability and democracy under U.S. tutelage has been painfully slow and difficult. So says a chorus of observers who reflexively transform not-unexpected obstacles to the establishment of an Iraqi government into major roadblocks. Typical was the New York Times' judgment, after reports of a delay in the signing of the interim Iraqi constitution, that the U.S. occupation had failed both to deliver Iraq from "pervasive insecurity" and to devise a "satisfactory formula … for creating the interim government due to assume power July 1." But although the problems confronting the United States and its coalition partners in Iraq are complex, they are not new. The good news is that when measured against the only previous attempt at Iraqi democracy-building — in the 1920s under the British — the current effort compares favorably in virtually every way. [...]

The U.S.-led democratization effort in Iraq, then, has been quite successful despite problems, risks and poorly handled situations. Even the Islamist terrorists seem to agree. In a way, their horrific surge of violent attacks against civilian targets last week, from the drive-by shooting of aid workers to the powerful car bomb in Baghdad, is a sign of their desperation and fear that democracy is taking root in Iraq, and that their window for destabilizing the country is closing. The goal of a stable, pluralistic democracy seems reachable — and we've been in Iraq only a year. If the pessimists read some history, they would learn that expectations of a swift conclusion to the Iraqi project are unrealistic and historically naive.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 21, 2004 7:10 PM