IF THE TALIBAN COULD HAVE WON ELECTIONS IT WOULD HAVE HELD THEM:

The Uzbek Dilemma (Lee Harris, 05/18/2005, Tech Central Station)

If you were part of the uprising, then the massacre was the most brutal type of state-sponsored oppression. If you are Uzbek President Islam Karimov, on the other hand, then the uprising was a dangerous opportunity for Muslim extremists and militants to seize power, in order to replace the current government with a Taliban-inspired regime sworn to promote acts of terror against the USA and the West.

Herein lies the brutal choice that the Bush administration currently faces in Uzbekistan, and which it will have to face in other regions throughout the Muslim world in the coming months and years. It is a choice between two principles that, taken together, constitute the foundation of Bush's policy toward the Muslim world. First, the administration is committed to fighting Islamic terrorists and militants. Second, it is committed to promoting popular democratic government in the Muslim world.

For over two years now the Bush administration has insisted that there was no conflict between these two principles. Indeed, the essence of Bush's policy toward the Islamic world has been that the way to end terrorism was by making Muslim societies more democratic, and thus more responsive to popular sentiment. Yet if Muslim popular sentiment turns out to be violent anti-American and virulently pro-terrorist, then what?

Given this unattractive choice, there are only two solutions. The Bush administration can continue to insist on more democracy, even if this ultimately means the Talibanization of the entire Muslim world, and the dissemination of virulent anti-Americanism from one end of the region to the other. Or else the administration can do a complete about-face on democracy: discourage the spread of popular government in Islamic societies, and be prepared to back authoritarian governments that are willing to use brutal means to check popular uprisings whenever these uprisings, however popular, threaten to overturn pro-American governments and to replace them with hostile anti-American Taliban-like regimes.

Of course, there is always a third alternative, which is simply to pretend that there is a third alternative, when in fact there isn't.

The first alternative is perfectly adequate. The notion that the peoples of the Islamic world will choose Talibanization democratically is rather nonsensical. But, suppose it's true and that liberalization leads to some kind of radical Islamicist superstate stretching from Africa to East Asia, hell bent on destroying the United States. If that eventuality is inevitable, why not hasten the moment while we have an overwhelming military advantage and just juke it out on our terms?

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 18, 2005 4:17 PM