W'S 20/20 VISION AND 50/50 EXECUTION:

God, Man, and the Ballot Box: Why, despite everything, George W. Bush was right about democratization in the Middle East. (Reuel Marc Gerecht, November 24, 2008, The American)

Although the “realists,” who preferred maintaining the authoritarian status quo in the region, still wielded considerable influence, especially in the State Department, the pro-democracy forces had greater momentum—and, in George W. Bush, they had the first American president who believed sincerely in Muslim democracy. For many democracy advocates, Iraq was going to be the great test. Iraqis were supposed to be the most secular of Muslim Arabs, this being perhaps the only positive byproduct of decades of Baathist tyranny. Freed from Saddam’s horrors, thankful Iraqi Arabs might even be able to do the unthinkable: help other Arabs see that there are far worse things in this world than Israelis. [...]

Although critics of the democratization agenda rarely praise Arab dictatorships, they essentially argue that secular autocracies, regardless of their sins, are better than illiberal “Islamic democrats” who hate America and who will either abort or render meaningless future elections once they gain power. In the critics’ view, democracy could easily become a tool of Islamic extremism, rather than an antidote to it. Therefore, we must hold our noses and support, if necessary, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, the West Bank’s Mahmoud Abbas, and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, because après eux, le déluge. In just seven years, we have entered a post-post-9/11 world.

This is a mistake. There is probably no more pressing issue among Middle Eastern Muslims than the increasingly vibrant marriage of Islamism and democracy. Indeed, the coming years will likely see large numbers of Islamists and ordinary Muslims demanding the right to vote. The more one studies Islam’s historic peoples—the Arabs, Iranians, and Turks—the more convinced he becomes that democracy is the only serious, legitimate political ideal on the Muslim horizon, as fundamentalists and Middle Eastern autocrats alike are realizing.

Middle Eastern regimes didn’t amplify their democratic rhetoric in 2004 and 2005 just to appease Washington. It is questionable how much the region’s rulers feared a U.S. administration humbled by Iraq, whose words rarely matched its (punitive) actions. The autocrats were probably more wary of their own populations: the 2005 Cedar Revolution in Lebanon briefly captivated the Middle East, as did the Iraqi national elections a few months earlier.

In the summer of 2007, long after the Bush administration had given up any effort to encourage democracy and protect democratic dissidents in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood released a political platform, the first in its history, designed to help the organization gain ground among the Egyptian people and introduce more philosophical coherence to internal Brotherhood debates about representative government. Slowly but surely it has become the most popular political and cultural force in the country. The publication of its platform indicates that the Brotherhood sees an opportunity to boost its profile in a changing Egyptian political environment— an opportunity that never existed under Gamal Abdel Nasser or Anwar Sadat.

Both American liberals and conservatives, like Middle Eastern autocrats, have been hopeful that the ongoing debate among Muslim fundamentalists about al-Qaeda’s sanguinary zeal—a zeal that has led to far more Muslims being killed than Americans or Israelis—signals the beginning of the end of al-Qaeda’s appeal to the hearts and minds of young Muslims tempted to kill and die for the faith. This hope is probably well founded. A consensus has developed among Arab Muslim fundamentalists that Islamic militants went too far in their embrace of violence in Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. Muslims who once condoned the slaughter of innocents as acceptable collateral damage in a righteous cause are now wondering whether God will damn all those who kill believers, even infidels, in his name.

This reconsideration of God, man, and holy war is likely to reinforce fundamentalists’ growing conversation about God, man, and the ballot box. Both discussions revolve around what actions make men and their societies righteous. An increasing number of devout Muslims reckon that democracy is the only means of returning Islamic society to a more virtuous state. Where secular dictatorships have sullied the community’s mores, democracy will aid religion and allow more virtuous men to lead society.

While George W. Bush was quite right about the future of Islam and did much to speed its coming, there are three broad mistakes he made that will have to be corrected as we go forward: (1) he should have gone directly from Baghdad to Damascus--the other Ba'athist regime ought not be tolerated either; (2) he should have used the patriotic yearnings of 9-11 to impose an onerous gas tax in order to help free the region from the curse of oil; and, (3) most difficult of all, he should have recognized that free elections would bring Islamists to power -- Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah -- but that the practice of representative government would moderate them and they are effectively our allies in the Reformation if the Islamic world.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 4, 2008 10:02 AM