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Bush shoots his Weapon of Mass
Democracy
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON -
The normally cool - if not coldly analytical - Anthony
Cordesman was uncharacteristically heated as he warmed
to his subject. "It may be excusable as a fantasy of
some Israelis reacting to the trauma of the second
Intifada. As American policy, however, it crosses the
line between neo-conservative and neo-crazy."
Cordesman, a Mideast specialist at the
conservative Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS) in Washington, was speaking about the
latest rationale offered with increasing insistence by
forces both within the administration of President
George W Bush and outside it for invading Iraq: the
notion that ousting President Saddam Hussein would
result in a flourishing of democracy, not just in Iraq,
but through the entire Middle East.
Hailed by
some commentators as the new "Wilsonian" thrust of
Bush's foreign policy, the idea has been gradually
embraced by the administration itself. Just last week,
Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told
the Financial Times that the US military should be seen
as "liberators" when it moves on Iraq, and that the
administration was devoted to "democratization, or the
march of freedom in the Muslim world". Vice President
Dick Cheney has said much the same thing in recent
weeks.
The idea is meant above all to appeal to
the more idealistic instincts of the US public. In that
respect, it counter-balances the arguably baser reasons
that have been more frequently invoked by leaders to
justify waging war on a foreign country and ousting its
leader: that Saddam has the means, and the intent, to
launch a devastating nuclear, biological or chemical
attack on the United States at any moment, or, in a more
sinister vein, that he is the secret puppeteer behind
Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
The Wilsonian
rationale, which takes its name from former president
Woodrow Wilson - ironically a champion of international
law whose aim in World War I was to "make the world safe
for democracy" - has been championed almost since last
year's September 11 terrorist attacks by a small group
of neo-conservatives with close ties to the right-wing
Likud Party in Israel.
The group, which is
concentrated at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI),
a major think tank whose ranks include, among others,
Cheney's wife Lynne and the chairman of Pentagon chief
Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle,
has long argued for extending the war on terrorism far
beyond Afghanistan and al-Qaeda to Iraq, Iran, Syria,
Lebanon, the Palestine Authority of Yasser Arafat and
even Washington's long-time ally, Saudi Arabia.
"What [the Bush administration] has in mind is a
broad vision," says Meyrav Wurmser, who directs Mideast
policy at the Hudson Institute but works closely with
Perle, "which really involves changing the character of
the Middle East."
If Saddam can be overthrown in
an overwhelming show of force, the argument goes, then
all of the autocracies that have dominated the Arab
world, resisting democratic reform and peace with
Israel, will themselves totter and collapse to popular
pressures, creating a domino effect from Iran in the
east, clear across North Africa as far as Libya.
The idea has been strongly embraced by Israel's
Likud. In testimony before Congress two weeks ago, for
example, former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu waxed
eloquent for hours before a mostly fawning group of
lawmakers. "So I think that the choice of going after
Iraq is like removing a brick that holds a lot of other
bricks and might cause this structure to crumble," he
said, focusing particularly on Iran, which he said was
ready for a new revolution.
The former prime
minister, a frequent guest at AEI, even cited the great
German philosopher Immanuel Kant to support his view
that an across-the-board democratization of the region
was the only way to guarantee peace between Israel and
its neighbors.
Netanyahu's focus on Iran as the
next target for the war on terror echoed the views of
Perle's AEI colleague Michael Ledeen, once an
anti-terrorism adviser to the administration of former
president Ronald Reagan, who helped broker the original
arms-for-weapons deal that underpinned what became the
Iran-Contra affair.
Since the Teheran government
was rocked by spontaneous protests one year ago, Ledeen
has repeatedly written that Iran is ripe for a pro-US
revolution, even suggesting in newspaper articles this
month that Iran might even precede Iraq as a target,
presumably for covert action.
"With a triumph in
Iran, the democratic revolution would quickly gain
allies in Syria and Iraq and transform our war against
Saddam Hussein from a primarily military operation to a
war of national liberation against a hated regime. This
war cannot be limited to national theaters," cautioned
Ledeen, who is also a founder and board member of
another neo-conservative group, the Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs.
"We face a regional
challenge and must respond accordingly. We are the one
truly revolutionary country on earth, which is both the
reason for which we were attacked in the first place and
the reason we will successfully transform the lives of
millions of people throughout the Middle East."
What makes this ambition and line of reasoning
so interesting is not only its origin among outspoken
"Likudniks" who have long opposed not only the Oslo
accords but the whole "land for peace" formula that has
formed the basis of US Mideast policy since 1967. It is
also the contrast between the hopes expressed on behalf
of the Arabs and Muslims who are supposed to benefit
from this policy and the contempt in which the same
beneficiaries are held by their self-described
champions.
Another AEI scholar, former CIA
officer Reuel Marc Gerecht, who takes the same line on
democratization, has repeatedly argued that power and
force are the only language understood in the Muslim
world. Months ago, for example, as Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon moved to re-occupy West Bank towns
and cities, Gerecht exulted, "The tougher Sharon
becomes, the stronger our image will be in the Middle
East."
Netanyahu echoed that view before
Congress: the political culture in the region's
societies "is not one of respecting force; it is
worshipping force, and the determination, resolution of
the United States in applying it".
This, indeed,
may be the other side of the democratization coin,
according to a number of observers. There is "something
hypocritical about the belief in democratization when it
is expounded by people who also hold the belief in the
clash of civilizations, who were insisting a few months
ago that there are regions of the world, particularly
the Islamic regions, in which culture makes freedom
impossible", noted the normally neo-conservative New
Republic recently.
As for Cordesman and other
Mideast experts, both the people who now champion
democratization as the rationale for war against Iraq
and the vehemence with which they continue to attack
Arab and Islamic societies "threaten to turn
'democratization' into a four-letter word".
(Inter Press Service)
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