DEMOCRACY? THANKS, BUT NO THANKS

Belligerence as a matter of choice (Evelyn Gordon, Jerusalem Post, November 8th, 2004)

Shortly after Afghanistan successfully completed its first democratic election, New York Times columnist William Safire wrote ebulliently that if Afghanis can do it, so can Iraqis and Palestinians.

But in his list of the reasons for Afghanistan's success (including George Bush's determination, international support, and Hamid Karzai's political talents), Safire omitted a crucial one: the Afghani people.

And that is precisely why a similar Iraqi or Palestinian success seems unlikely – because while Afghanis chose to work together to build their country, Iraqis and Palestinians have chosen to turn theirs into living hells.

Afghanistan is the only one of the three where every major population sector agreed to decide the country's future by elections rather than force of arms.

That choice was far from obvious: With the Pashtuns comprising an absolute majority of Afghanistan, ethnic minorities knew they had no chance of winning the presidential election.

Nevertheless, Afghanis of every stripe registered to vote, and even fielded candidates. Not a single ethnic group boycotted the elections.

Furthermore, the losers quickly reversed an initial refusal to accept the results due to voting irregularities. Had they persisted in their refusal they could have plunged the country into chaos or even civil war.

Their concession was a credit to them as individuals, but even more it was a credit to their electorates. In Afghanistan, playing the spoiler does not win hearts and minds.

No less important was the flip side of the equation: eschewing violence.

Though every ethnic group has its own private army, they turned these armies neither on each other nor on Western forces helping to stabilize the country. Instead, they joined the Western forces in hunting down Taliban and al-Qaida remnants that did want to act as spoilers.

While Afghanis dislike being "occupied" no less than do Iraqis or Palestinians, they opted to end their occupation peacefully – by forming a stable, democratic government that could simply ask the Westerners to leave whenever their presence became unnecessary or undesirable.

As a result, Afghanistan has suffered far less violence than either Iraq or the Palestinian Authority.

In Iraq, the minority Sunnis adopted the opposite approach.

Ever since Saddam Hussein fell, they have waged vicious war not only against America but against their fellow Iraqis. Indeed, many attacks are specifically aimed at Iraqis: at policemen – who are in the forefront of efforts to build a stable, democratic Iraq – and even at ordinary civilians.

Iraqi terrorists have bombed crowded marketplaces and even an elementary school; they have kidnapped aid workers, including Iraqi ones, whose sole goal is to assist the civilian population; they have attacked oil pipelines, sewage and power plants, and other facilities aimed at improving Iraqis' quality of life.
Moreover, a leading association of Sunni clerics threatened to have its followers boycott January's elections if any attempt is made to end the violence by attacking the terrorist stronghold of Fallujah.

In short, the Sunnis will tolerate voting only if it does not interfere with their shooting.

One of the most cogent arguments against interventions like that in Iraq is that it is politically impossible to exit without a sense of abject failure and a very high political cost if democracy does not take hold. The debate over the canard of whether the war and its aftermath were properly planned betrays a naive (and arguably racist) assumption on both sides that success is entirely in the hands of the U.S. if only the bright people in Washington get everything right. This assumption is reinforced by the popular perception of the war as a fight against a very small cadre of tyrants in the name of a general population craving liberation and democracy.

However, just as many aboriginal North Americans resisted countless efforts to improve their lives through incidences of Western ideals and progress (often to the point of choosing social pathology instead), so it may be that some peoples–and the Arab world unfortunately comes to mind–will continue to choose political and social stasis, and choose it violently. In such a case, there should be no reason why the U.S. shouldn’t hold its head very high for its noble sacrifice in giving a country like Iraq the chance of a lifetime, and put the responsibility for failure where it belongs. But that may not happen unless politicians and opinion leaders start talking that way. Ordinary Iraqis should soon start hearing growling warnings that the American army has no intention of staying forever and they had better find the courage to rise to the occasion fast.