Politics East and West.
The hard lessons of reality.
By Paul J Cella Posted in Featured Stories | War — Comments (20) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The steadiest Democratic supporter in the Senate of the war in Iraq was defeated yesterday (though he may yet win — but, importantly, not as a Democrat). Also yesterday, the editor of National Review — a publication which (against the strenuous objections of some) was instrumental in establishing the Republican and right-wing support for, not merely the war, but the democratic reconstruction project ancillary to the war — signaled a rather dramatic retreat from the latter project. Writes Rich Lowry: “Bush’s emphasis on the inherent [and universal] hunger for freedom is powerful.” But it is encumbered by a serious problem: “it appears to not be true.” “All around the chaotic and violent Middle East, human hearts are yearning for many things, but freedom isn’t high on the list.” Lowry particularly criticizes Bush the Christian for forgetting “a central event in understanding human motivation”: the Fall from grace. “Pride and hatred and fear are as likely to drive human behavior as any hunger for freedom.”
The administration’s foreign policy also neglects the “conservative wisdom about the importance of institutions and culture.” “Even if people desire to be free,” it is idle to talk as if this were enough: for the institutions by which even the most genuine longing for freedom may be expressed fruitfully “are excruciatingly hard to build up once they have been torn down.” Lowry’s next statement is particularly pointed: “Hezbollah seems to have a better understanding of human hearts, at least in its part of the world, than the president of the Unites States does.” This might strike some as facile, even insulting; but imagine the manifest stupidity of Hezbollah pronouncing on the fundamentals of American politics. Whatever else we might say about Party of God of southern Lebanon, it seems to have achieved some measure of popularity — not merely in Lebanon (which, recall, is a country in the Middle East perhaps most notable for its religious diversity), but even in our own protectorate in Iraq. The politics of jihad, in short, are popular.
Now the politics of jihad have always been popular in the lands of Islam. The armies of the blood-red Crescent besieged Constantinople repeatedly, beginning in the 7th century; in the 8th century, they blockaded the great city, nearly overwhelmed it, and were driven off only by a combination of Byzantine brilliance and sheer bad luck; yet their desire to capture the “Red Apple” did not diminish, and long after the Arab had been replaced by the Turk as the fearsome arm of jihad, the Red Apple was still eyed greedily by every ambitious ruler under the banner of Islam. More time separated Mehmet II, when he finally trod out the last dying ember of the Byzantine Empire, from the Arabs who laid siege to her capital city in 718, than separates us from Mehmet. And only a few decades after the terrible loss of Constantinople, with the Sultan smiling upon the Golden Horn and Christendom fractured, the new Red Apple was Rome. Islam is a system organized for war. It has not yet produced a pacific society; it has not yet even produced a truly commercial society — for the commerce of, say, the Turks, was merely the finance of the war. I don’t think any clear-eyed assessment of the lineaments of Islamic history can gainsay its warlike nature.
Now it is possible to answer this argument by proclaiming human civilization itself a system organized for war. I do not propose to enter this debate here; but it is important to note that this answer is much more shattering to Bush’s vision of universal aspirations to freedom than anything I have said about Islam. All I have said is that the civilization which has emerged from the religion of Mohammad, is in certain supremely important ways made of different stuff than our civilization. In the confrontation with Islam our dearly-held theories of political universalism must yield to reality. So far we have endeavored the impossible: to make reality yield to our theory.
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Politics East and West. 20 Comments (0 topical, 20 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I hate to consider the thought that the Islamic world can NOT have a democratic society. It begs the question, "Ok, then what?"
But no one wants to say it. If indeed (and I don't buy it for a second) Arabs, Persians and other Islamists will never respond to the improved hope offered by freedom and prosperity. Then they are our eternal enemy to the death.
We would then have only two choices, retreat to a "fortress America" and let the world go to hell, or Conquer and subjugate them and exterminate the practice of their entire Religion.
So you see the hidden import of this way of thinking?
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
Fortress America or a jihad of our own? What nonsense. Another option would be to isolate them -- to quarantine the Muslim world to soak in its juices for a while. Another is the Cold War model of sustained opposition by varying means, the first step being a recognition that Islam -- or at least a very large faction of Islam -- is a worldwide revolutionary movement which must be resisted with intelligence, resolve, and if necessary, brutal force.
We should not preemptively limit our options.
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
I supported the Iraq II war for a variety of reasons. However, I have come to believe, like Lowry, that creating a civic culture in islamic countries that would support democratic gov't is too difficult. That the best to be hoped for in many of these countries is a benevolent dictator who is not an Islamofascist. I do not blame Bush et al for trying to establish democracy in Iraq.
Is no reason to give up. And we Have to hope and pray that it is possible and that Iraq will show that it Can work.
If not, then, like Kyle said above, we have only 2 options, and I somehow don't think many Americans would be particularly happy about the blood we would have to bathe in to protect ourselves and our friends and families in the choosing of Either option...
"Always be honest with yourself even if you are honest with no one else...
...It helps you keep track of your lies..."
--Myself
This talk of a binary choice of isolation or bloodbath is irresponsible and, frankly, quite unworthy of Americans.
I mean, for Pete's sake, what is worse to contemplate: a policy which aims at the extirpation of an entire religion, the world over, or a policy which aims at the gradual out-migration of Muslims from our country? Which is the greater injustice, to deport Muslims, or to massacre them?
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
It sounds like subtle racism to me. American democracy was not built in a day (or year). We have the benefit (and the blinders) of history. Some seem to think that democracy just sprang up full form in America. There were fits and starts and the founders could have given up many time but they didn't and I do not see why we should give up on democracy after just a few years in the middle east. To think that benevolent dictators are the solution is extremely wrong headed. Remember that one decades benevolent dictator is the nexts evil tyrant. All people of the world should have the opportunity that our founders gave to us.
I'm not sure how this is a rebuttal of Paul's point; in my reading, he's not asserting the intrinsic possibility of peaceful democracy in the Middle East, but rather that there are certain necessary antecedents for a healthy, liberal democracy. The US was born out of a centuries-old Judeo-Christian/Greco-Roman culture, and that's something lacking in the Muslim countries in the Mideast. Our founders depended on this antecedent culture and the social structures it provided. It's a bit naive of us to expect a liberal democracy to flourish *anytime soon*... we need to lower our expectations, without endorsing a dictatorship (as you mention).
The Japanese, and South Koreans take to freedom and democracy after having no "centuries old foundation?
"Nothing works like freedom, "Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
That's a good point... I've pointed to the Japanese model myself.
But all this demonstrates is that the Judeo-Christian/Greco-Roman cultural matrix is not the only one capable of generating a liberal democracy. It doesn't demonstrate that the Islamic culture is capable of doing so, which is obviously the problem we face.
The Japanese "took to" democracy only in the face of overwhelming force and the almost complete destruction of their pre-existing economic and socio-political order. Likewise, the Koreans had to "take to" our democratic ways in order to keep us between them and their northern brothers after the Japanese had destroyed their socio-political order. You might note that we are not necessarily so happy with what their democratic government does these days.
I have little doubt that the Islamic world would to some degree "take to" democratic ways if we killed a huge percentage of their military age men, destroyed their means of production, executed or imprisoned most of their leaders and ran their countries under actual or quasi-martial law for a decade or two. That's the real Japanese, and for that matter German, model.
Not sure we want to go there.
In Vino Veritas
I am the very last person to argue that American "democracy" was built in a day. If you can discover one indication, anywhere in my writings, to suggest I think the establishment of free republican government a simple or easy thing, please, do enlighten us.
Nor did I say anything about benevolent dictators. What I said is that we ought to the Islamic peoples of the world the respect of taking serious what they say about the inducements of Western democracy. A very significant proportion of them say it can go to hell.
There seems to be something of presumption and arrogance in the declaration that a man's values are in fact the values of all men.
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
I made a mistake by posting to your post instead of replying to sandbox's comment. My bad. I certainly didn't mean to offend.
I'll come right out and say it upfront: National Review may have been the standard-bearer of conservatism in the 20th century, but it's threatening to become the John Birch Society of the 21st.
Democracy is not a magic wand. It doesn't solve problems overnight, or even in half a decade. Sectarian violence in Iraq and for that matter in all the Middle East is going to happen under anything other than under total dictatorships, no matter what. The violence in Iraq is no more an indication of the failure of democracy than the heart attack of a man rescued an hour earlier from certain death is the fault of his rescuer.
Bush had it dead right from the very beginning: this is not going to be a short war by any stretch of the imagination. Violence has been happening in the Middle East pretty much all of our lives, and it's a pretty easy bet to say that there will most likely continue to be at least some level of violence in the Middle East for the rest of our lives. But that doesn't mean that democracy in the Middle East is doomed to failure, no more than the Whiskey Rebellion doomed the early United States to become a failed state.
Everyone is allowed a crisis of faith now and then, and with any luck that's all that NR is going through now. I really hope NR does not continue down its current path, however; for that leads to Pat Buchanan, and no one wants to go there.
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Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community
By all means lets quit now when some of our goals are finally coming into view.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
Has everyone forgotten the shooting of the Jews by that Muslim a week or so ago? Does that not qualify as "sectarian violence"? How much of that is going on in Our own country?
"Always be honest with yourself even if you are honest with no one else...
...It helps you keep track of your lies..."
--Myself
it's sad that if a thing can't be said, or a war won, in a 15-second soundbite, nobody has patience for it these days.
I fell out of love (if I could have ever been said to be in love) with National Review months ago, though. there are still a few folks over at NRO that I like (JPod, Jonah, Whelan at BenchMemos, and a few others), but occasionally still have to shake my head sadly at.
Democratic countries can also be violent. Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are both democracies and have been so for decades, but they had that little IRA problem for a long, long time. It took seemingly forever for the population to get tired of the fighting and it's pretty much stopped now.
Look at the Kurds! They are in the middle of this mess, yet they are thriving and peaceful.
I see the Sunnis in Iraq as the core problem. They ruled that area under the Ottomans, the British, and under Saddam. It's going to take a while for it to sink it that are no longer the ruling minority. That is the main cause of the violence that is happening now. Foreign jihadis are part of the mix, too, but the native Sunnis are the biggest problem. The Shiites have been oppressed in their own country for decades. They are not about to go back to second-class status.
This is going to take a very long time to work out. I am not yet willing to abandon the whole project.
But there are limits. The Iraqis might indeed be better served if we withdrew to Kurdistan and Kuwait and let them settle their feud without us being in the way.
of a gradual shift in editorial opinion at NR concerning the war, it would be nice were they to publish a post-mortem on their advocacy of the policy, along with an acknowledgment that not everyone who opposed the war, and not everyone criticized in the pages of the dead-tree magazine, and via the bandwidth of the website, was deserving of that criticism. We should leave the fratricide to the left.