Asia | Politics

In Defense of Democratizing Iraq

Last week, the Wall Street Journal carried a vigorous defense of the pursuit of spreading democracy. Talking of Obama, and his anti-war rhetoric, Bret Stephens says (Great (American) Expectations, January 8, 2008):

There is great virtue in the American way, which expects CEOs to perform on a quarterly basis, presidents and Congresses to reinvent politics in 100 days, generals to wipe out opponents in 100 hours without taking significant casualties, doctors to save life and limb every time, search engines to yield a million results in less than a second, and so on. There is also great virtue in the belief that what is bad can be made good, and that what is good can be made great, and that what is fractionally less than great is downright awful.

But these virtues can spawn vices. One is impatience. Another is a culture of chronic complaint. A third is the belief that every problem has a solution, that trial is possible without error, that risks must always be zero, that every inconvenience is an outrage, every setback a disaster and every mishap a plausible basis for a lawsuit.

It is often said that the Bush administration’s effort to bring democracy to the Middle East wasn’t so much a case of American idealism as it was of hubris. That may yet prove true. But is it any less hubristic to think the enterprise was ever going to be brought off without blundering time and again? It’s a thought that ought to weigh especially heavily on Mr. Obama, dream candidate of America’s great expectations.

What is perhaps most pertinent here is that last paragraph, which provides a compelling case for at least trying. It, therefore, contradicts another WSJ oped titled Democracy Has Been Demoted. Talking of the Burmese protests in October, Daniel Henninger (October 4, 2007) argued then that the principle of spreading democracy itself was out of favor:

The damage has been done. The Burmese or the voters this week in Ukraine’s fitful democracy or Russia’s Garry Kasparov–who all want what Mr. Bush described in that doctrine–should understand how far down in importance their goal has fallen in the affairs of men.

The point is this. It is easy to criticize the war for the misery it has brought on everyone. Yet, had Rumsfeld succeeded in establishing a stable State quickly he would have been heralded as a savior, not treated like a pariah. Is it right to reject the war or its principles simply because hindsight is 20-20?

The purpose, of course, is not to analyze Iraq ad neauseum. But what Iraq seems to suggest and what these two articles show is that there is a fine line between promoting democracy - and imposing it. The failure of the latter effort should not be turned into a rejection of the former.

© 2008 The Discomfort Zone.