The Middle East responds to the Bush democratic initiatives
©2004, UrbisMedia
When Donald Rumsfeld now famously said that when you make people free they might do some “crazy things.” he was referring to the looting of the Iraqis after the cessation of major hostilities. This was before they started doing some “crazy things” like road side bombs, RPG attacks and other activities that created still mounting casualties in greater numbers before the mission was declared “accomplished.” Mr. Rumsfeld seems to have dropped that assessment of the glories of freedom, although not his dismissive manner.
Freeing Iraq of its dictator was, of course, the necessary preamble to what George Bush seems to regard as his personal gift to the world: democracy. Never mind that his administration is perhaps the greatest threat to our own enfeebled democracy. But image means more than substance in the Bush administration, and ends seem to justify any means. Put a powerful military behind that notion, and keep the home front in a state of post 9-11 terror disorder, and that ambition is, de facto , counterintuitive to spreading democracy. One wonders whether Mr. Bush understands much at all about democracy, about which he seems to have rather simplistic and zealous notions.
In fact, as reported in the Wilson Quarterly and other respected sources, democracy and varying degrees of political liberalization, have been on the increase in this century, without the assistance of George Bush. But the Middle East has been notoriously resistant to the democracy bug, several states with some assistance from the Bush family and their regional oil interests. Other than partially free states like Turkey, Jordan and Yemen, the Middle East has proven to be a black hole for democracy.
Democracy means different things to different people. Some people will die for it, others feel they will die from it. There are those who see it as the dearest aspect of their lives, and there are those who will trade it away cheaply where tyranny renders them better material well-being. There are states that call themselves democracies that are blatant dictatorships and there are states that are not democratic that may be better and more humanely governed than some so-called democracies. The condition of democracy should also not be assumed to automatically be the result of the deployment of a democratic process, such as elections, or produce respect for human rights, or the rights of minorities.
At the most basic level democracy is government by the consent of the governed. But it may also be regarded as a “state of mind” that aims at the best achievable and balanced relationship between the individual and community, between liberty and fraternity. But while democracy guarantees individual rights associated with that notion, it neither foreordains nor guarantees any particular results from is electoral processes. Democracy may result in “bad” decisions, they are just decisions whose culpability might be shared by the majority in a society (hence “people get the kind of government they deserve”). Ironically, democratic processes have elected anti-democratic leaders. As humans, while we come genetically programmed for many of the behaviors that govern our lives and destinies, there does not appear to be a democracy gene. Democracy doesn’t come “naturally”; it’s on the nurture side of the human behavior equation.
Democracy, however, can be practiced without any theoretical understanding of what actions produce which results. Although people may engage in democracy with the implied rationality that their actions (say voting) will produce intended, or hoped for, results, it should be remembers that fools, rogues and idiots also have participatory rights in a democracy.
It was once the prime tenet of the Marxist-Leninist dogma that capitalism and its democratic consort were merely temporary stopovers in political and economic development on the way the Communist nirvana. Such notions now lie buried under the rubble of the Berlin wall and the oily rhetoric that allows all sorts of capitalistic practices to slip into Asian states “with Chinese characteristics”. The Middle Kingdom that once believed that it did not need anything the West had to offer, and had to have its doors broken down by gunboats, now hankers for WTO membership, the Olympics, and McDonald’s and Starbucks franchises. Does this mean that democracy comes “bundled” with capitalism? Not if you were at Tiananmen Square in ’89, or have seen the lousy deal Hong Kong got in the handover; not if you can see what’s behind the rhetoric of Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew’s “Asian values.” Not that those states will shy from calling themselves the “democratic republic” of this or that. But, real democracy may be just a bit too unpredictable, and the voice of the people a tad too cacophonous, for the rough and tumble world of globalism in the new millennium. Bucks seem to trump votes every time.
Call it hypocrisy, but it’s a game that has been well played by that Johnny Appleseed of democracy, the good ole US of A. Nixon and Reagan were happy to crush a Central or South American incipient democracy if American business interests were threatened, Marxists made any inroads into the hearts of the disenfranchised, or their buddies like Noriega, Stroessner, or Pinochet needed a little help. That sorry history, combined with Reagan and Bush I’s former support for that great democrat, Saddam Hussein, is going to make a hard road for Little Georgie’s campaign for a democratized Middle East. Like his own Secretary of Defense said, somewhat sagely: free people will sometimes do some “crazy things.”
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©2004, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 6.25.2004)
Based partially on “Planning and Democracy: Uneasy Partners,” World Planning Schools Congress,
Shanghai, China, July 13, 2001