[Vacets-local-dc] [Three Cheers for the Bush Doctrine ]

[Hai Tran]

The Washington Post 
Three Cheers for the Bush Doctrine 


History has begun to speak, and it says that America made the right 
decision to invade Iraq 


Monday, Mar. 07, 2005 


Jon Stewart, the sage of Comedy Central, is one of the few to be honest 
about it. "What if Bush ... has been right about this all along? I feel 
like my world view will not sustain itself and I may ... implode." 
Daniel Schorr, another critic of the Bush foreign policy, ventured, a 
bit more grudgingly, that Bush "may have had it right." 


Right on what? That America, using power harnessed to democratic 
ideals, could begin a transformation of the Arab world from endless 
tyranny and intolerance to decent governance and democratization. Two 
years ago, shortly before the invasion of Iraq, I argued in these pages 
that forcefully deposing Saddam Hussein was, more than anything, about 
America "coming ashore" to effect a "pan-Arab reformation"--a 
dangerous, "risky and, yes, arrogant" but necessary attempt to change 
the very culture of the Middle East, to open its doors to democracy and 
modernity. 


The Administration went ahead with this great project knowing it would 
be hostage to history. History has begun to speak. Elections in 
Afghanistan, a historic first. Elections in Iraq, a historic first. 
Free Palestinian elections producing a moderate leadership, two 
historic firsts. Municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, men only, but 
still a first. In Egypt, demonstrations for democracy--unheard of in 
decades--prompting the dictator to announce free contested presidential 
elections, a historic first. 


And now, of course, the most romantic flowering of the spirit America 
went into the region to foster: the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, in 
which unarmed civilians, Christian and Muslim alike, brought down the 
puppet government installed by Syria. There is even the beginning of a 
breeze in Damascus. More than 140 Syrian intellectuals have signed a 
public statement defying their government by opposing its occupation of 
Lebanon. 


To what do we attribute this Arab spring? While American (and European) 
liberal and "realist" critics are seeking some explanation, those a bit 
closer to the scene don't flinch from the obvious. "It is strange for 
me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the 
American invasion of Iraq," Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt 
explained to David Ignatius of the Washington Post. "I was cynical 
about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 
million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian 
people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The 
Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it." 


When Ronald Reagan declared that the unfreedom imposed by communism was 
simply unsustainable and that it should be not appeased or 
accommodated, but instead forced--by the power and will of free 
peoples--into the ash heap of history, he was ridiculed and patronized 
as a simpleton. Clark Clifford famously called him an amiable dunce. 
The amiable dunce went on to win the cold war. 


Two decades later, another patronized President. Our intellectuals and 
Middle East "experts" have been telling us that Bush's grand project to 
democratize the region is the fantasy of a historical illiterate. Faced 
with the stunning Iraqi election, they went to great lengths to 
attribute this inconvenient yet undeniable success to the courage of 
the Iraqi people. 


This is all very nice. But this courage was rather dormant before the 
American invasion. It was America's overthrow of Saddam's republic of 
fear that gave to the Iraqi people space and air and the very 
possibility of expressing courage. 


Those now waxing rhapsodic about the courage of the natives and the 
beauty of people power need to ask themselves the obvious question: Why 
now? It is easy to get sentimental about people power. But people power 
does not always prevail. Indeed, it rarely prevails. It was crushed in 
Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Tiananmen Square 1989--and Iraq 
1991. Matched against tyranny at its point of maximum cruelty, people 
power is useless. 


In the 1991 uprising, tens of thousands of Shi'ites and Kurds were 
killed by the raw power of Saddam's helicopters and tanks and secret 
police. What was different this time? No Saddam. The American army had 
come ashore to disarm and depose him. After the sword, it provided the 
shield to allow 8 million Iraqis to revel in their first exercise of 
democratic self-governance. 


Why now? Because until now the forces of decency in the region were 
alone and naked, cynically ignored by an outside world content to deal 
with their oppressors. Then comes America, not just proclaiming 
democratic liberation as its overriding foreign policy principle but 
sacrificing blood and treasure in the service of precisely that 
principle. 


It was not people power that set this in motion. It was American power. 
People power followed. Which is why the critics of the Bush doctrine 
take refuge in a second Bush-free explanation. They locate the reason 
for this astonishing Arab spring, if not in people power from below, 
then in rot from above. These superannuated dictatorships, we are now 
told, were fossilized and frail, already wobbly and ready to fall, just 
waiting to be undone by the slightest challenge. 


Interesting. If the rot was always there, why is it that these critics 
never said so before? They never suggested that we challenge these 
wobbly despots? In fact, they bitterly denounced the Bush doctrine for 
presuming to destabilize the region in pursuit of some democratic 
chimera? They opposed the Bush doctrine precisely because they 
preferred stability. They warned us darkly that the alternative to the 
status quo was the seething Arab street--an unruly mob, anarchic, 
anti-American, pan-Arabist or perhaps Islamist, ignorant of all liberal 
traditions and ready to rise up against America should it disturb the 
perfect order of things by "imposing democracy." 


Turns out, the critics, liberal and "realist," got the Arab street 
wrong. In Iraq and Lebanon, the Arab street finally got to speak, and 
mirabile dictu, it speaks of freedom and dignity. It does not bay for 
American blood. On the contrary, its leaders now openly point to the 
American example and American intervention as having provided the 
opening for this first tentative venture in freedom. 


What really changed in the Middle East? The Iraqi elections vindicated 
the two central propositions of the Bush doctrine. First, that the will 
to freedom is indeed universal and not the private preserve of 
Westerners. And second, that American intentions were sincere. Contrary 
to the cynics, Arab and European and American, the U.S. did not go into 
Iraq for oil or hegemony, after all, but for liberation--a truth that 
on Jan. 31 even al-Jazeera had to televise. 


This was the critical event because Arabs have had good reason to doubt 
American sincerity: six decades of U.S. support for Arab dictators, a 
cynical "realism" that began with F.D.R.'s deal with Ibn Saud and 
reached its apogee with the 1991 betrayal of the anti-Saddam uprising 
that Bush 41 had encouraged in Iraq. Today, however, they see a 
different Bush and a different doctrine. What changed the climate in 
the Middle East was not just the U.S. invasion and show of arms. It was 
U.S. determination and staying power, and the refusal of its people 
last November to turn out a President who rejected an "exit strategy" 
but pledged instead to remain until Iraqi self-governance was secure. 


It took this marriage of power, will and principle to produce the 
astonishing developments in the Middle East today. This is not to say 
that this spring cannot be extinguished. Of course it can. The 
dictators can still strike back, and we may flinch in defense of those 
they strike. History has yet to yield a verdict on the final outcome. 
But it has yielded one unmistakable verdict thus far: the idea that 
Arabs are not fit for or inclined toward freedom--the underlying 
assumption of those who denounced, ridiculed and otherwise opposed the 
democracy project--is wrong. Embarrassingly, scandalously, blessedly 
wrong. 





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You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
		
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