A quest for democracy

Far from exporting democracy to the Arab world, Iraq is now exporting terrorism to Arab countries. A clear indication of it is the recent events in Amman, Jordan.

A cardinal advocate of the Iraq war, Kanan Makiya at the American Enterprise Institute, no less has described what has transpired of the Iraq war as "so many dashed hopes, broken dreams, [and] a lot of water under the bridge".

In a previous article in this paper ("Iraq war and democracy in the region," Gulf News, 22/7/2005), I have pointed out that the claim the Iraq war was spurring democratic movements in the region was fatuous at the general level.

But what about the empirical cases that are cited in support for such defeasible claim.

My concern was about certain intellectuals and pundits who, with Orwellian twist, retroactively rationalise the war on different grounds than its original justification.

Specifically, my critique of experts who have all along sneered at the suggestion that external powers may have a determining impact on the regional politics are now fastidiously making claim to the contrary.

The epistemological transmogrification is tailored, not to a newly received wisdom, but to the exigency of the new policy.

Truth must be told that much of what is presented in support for such argument is pabulum fed to the public in place of analyses grounded in history.

And as the veteran journalist, Charles Glass, argued if these experts defied the assumptions on which the powers that be launched the Iraq war "they would have invited some other court academic to articulate their prejudices. There are countless takers in academe willing to assume that role."

But in no way do I doubt the sincerity of some in the current administration, though not all, about their desire to spread democracy in the Middle East.

In fact the cause of freedom runs deep to the American vertebrae.

The best expression of such proclivities, if sometime solipsistic, is what one source quoting an army general who averred in the Stanley Kubrick's film Full Metal Jacket "inside every gook there is an American waiting to get out".

The same source cites Frances Fitzgerald's study on Vietnam that asserts: "Americans see history as a straight line and themselves standing at the cutting edge of it as representatives for all mankind."

No motto

Freedom is around the corner is no motto, it's an American creed. But it behoves us to remember that the road to perdition is paved with wishful thinking too!

No doubt many in the beltway will impetuously point to the current parliamentary elections in Egypt as an empirical case that supports the thesis that the Iraq war was the harbinger to the wider democratisation of the Middle East.

Unbeknownst to them that Egypt, as historian Rashid Khalidi has argued, had "a constitution before many Eastern and Southern European countries".

The other case cited in support of the thesis doesn't hold much water. The turn of events in Palestine/Israel is largely due to the dynamics of that region.

The Palestinian elections, hardly new to the politics of that nation, and certainly completely divorced from the Iraq War, was to happen because Israel removed the obstacles from holding it after the death of Arafat.

In fact, if anything, Israel, backed by the US to the hilt, has been standing in the way of Palestinians' yearning for freedom.

In the case of the Gulf states political reforms and the calls for it predates even the US portentous involvement in Middle Eastern affairs.

Many will be surprised to learn that in 1938 three reform movements sprung in Kuwait, Bahrain and Dubai demanding an elected majlis or parliament.

To date, Kuwait has enjoyed a vibrant parliament and relatively free press.

Even the recent enfranchising of women in Kuwait was first introduced by the Emir's edict in 1999, but lost in parliament by two votes.

Likewise, Qatar and Bahrain have charted their ways in political reforms long before the Iraq war.

Iraq is the one case were the administration can take credit for its free elections.

To be sure Iraqis wouldn't have even dreamt of semblance of freedom under the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussain.

Even in this clear case of Iraq where the US intervention made the whole difference, US Senator Joseph Biden volubly reminds us that "it was Ayatollah Sistani who insisted on early elections against the wishes of the White House".

It is high time to realise that the whole Iraq war has become no more than a will-o'-the-wisp.

As one astute observer has put it one cannot peddle "a simulacrum of democracy from an armoured truck at fifty miles per hour and calling it freedom".

The US's clarion call for democracy is bound to have impact, and admittedly here the US is on solid moral grounds. But the call has to come from the mind and the heart not from the barrel of a gun.

Dr Albadr S.S. Alshateri is a political analyst and writer from the UAE.