Democracy and the War on Terror
From Ryan Fant
Speaking in Cairo on Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice reiterated the Bush administration's seemingly newfound and unwavering support for democracy. She declared that, "For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."
Rice's comments correctly point out that during at least the last half-century, the United State's foreign policy has been more predicated on promoting stability than democracy. For example, in 1953 we overthrew the freely elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mossadeq, and replaced him with the brutally repressive Shah, an action that directly contributed to the 1979 Iranian revolution. We then supported a young dictator, Saddam Hussein, as a counterweight to the Iranian Islamic state we had helped create.
Rice would like the world to believe that the Bush Administration has repudiated this past and now is an ardent supporter of democracy. When the administration's claims of WMDs in Iraq turned out to be false, Bush changed his rhetoric and justified the war in Iraq, and the broader War on Terror, on the grounds that it promoted democracy. Bush's supporters have pointed to modest and unproven democratic gains in the region to validate Bush's policies. These gains have included the opening of municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, and the promise of more open elections in Egypt.
While the Bush administration has freely pointed to these accomplishments, it has failed to mention that Bush has backed repressive and undemocratic countries such as Uzbekistan and Pakistan because of their support in the War on Terror. Recently over 700 civilian protesters were gunned down by the forces of Uzbek dictator Karimov, but our criticism was muted because of our desire for continued access to their airbase. President Bush has repeatedly praised Pakistani President Musharraf as a bold leader "dedicated in the protection of his own people," despite Musharraf's dismal human rights record and undemocratic ascension to power in a military coup. The fallacy of Bush's praise is evident by the fact that on average a woman is raped every two hours in Pakistan and every day two women die in honor killings. These crimes are most often unpunished.
Rice's promise of supporting the "democratic aspirations of all people" must ring hollow to the millions of people who struggle under the despotic rule of our allies in the War on Terror.
Speaking in Cairo on Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice reiterated the Bush administration's seemingly newfound and unwavering support for democracy. She declared that, "For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."
Rice's comments correctly point out that during at least the last half-century, the United State's foreign policy has been more predicated on promoting stability than democracy. For example, in 1953 we overthrew the freely elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mossadeq, and replaced him with the brutally repressive Shah, an action that directly contributed to the 1979 Iranian revolution. We then supported a young dictator, Saddam Hussein, as a counterweight to the Iranian Islamic state we had helped create.
Rice would like the world to believe that the Bush Administration has repudiated this past and now is an ardent supporter of democracy. When the administration's claims of WMDs in Iraq turned out to be false, Bush changed his rhetoric and justified the war in Iraq, and the broader War on Terror, on the grounds that it promoted democracy. Bush's supporters have pointed to modest and unproven democratic gains in the region to validate Bush's policies. These gains have included the opening of municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, and the promise of more open elections in Egypt.
While the Bush administration has freely pointed to these accomplishments, it has failed to mention that Bush has backed repressive and undemocratic countries such as Uzbekistan and Pakistan because of their support in the War on Terror. Recently over 700 civilian protesters were gunned down by the forces of Uzbek dictator Karimov, but our criticism was muted because of our desire for continued access to their airbase. President Bush has repeatedly praised Pakistani President Musharraf as a bold leader "dedicated in the protection of his own people," despite Musharraf's dismal human rights record and undemocratic ascension to power in a military coup. The fallacy of Bush's praise is evident by the fact that on average a woman is raped every two hours in Pakistan and every day two women die in honor killings. These crimes are most often unpunished.
Rice's promise of supporting the "democratic aspirations of all people" must ring hollow to the millions of people who struggle under the despotic rule of our allies in the War on Terror.
2 Comments:
Sounds frightening. You know what's more frightening? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!
Political change comes slowly. Just ask the slaves liberated by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclaimation, who would spend nearly a century in the political wilderness before their rights as free men and women were firmly recognized by the United States and the world. Just ask the "beneficiaries" of Mao's Great Leap Forward, who have the dubious distinction of standing in history as the greatest example of the cost of attempting to force rapid and radical political change. Or perhaps "standing" is the wrong word to use when describing those piteous 30 million dead.
Political change in as traditionally conservative a region as the Middle East thus cannot rationally be expected to come quickly. Democratic gains there are anything but "modest and unproven." There is nothing unproven about Kuwait's new directly-elected National Assembly, recent granting of women's suffrage, or the appointment of the country's first female cabinet minister last week. Nor is there anything unproven about Qatar's new constitution, Yemen's newly established multiparty poltiical system, or democratic elections in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan. These changes are very real to the people of those nations, and to dismiss them as "modest" is a slap in the face to every man, woman, and child who has labored for democratic reform, then and now.
Yes, millions of people in the Middle East still struggle under the despotism, but we can at least have the decency to recognize their struggles as the first steps towards reform, and hold up existing reforms as examples to be followed. Mao would have had us leap, but the reality is that the march of democracy is taken one step at a time.
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