There is definitely a sense of having slipped into some alternate reality from the one I knew pre-9/11. I remember in early 2001 a sense of foreboding that, with the Republicans having won the White House, there would be a shift back to the realpolitik of Bush I and James Baker. The warnings of the Clinton administration about the strategic threat posed by Saddam Hussein and the urgent need to push for regime change in Iraq would be ignored, and we would continue to treat the Middle East as, in the words of Thomas Friedman, "a big dumb gas station". I fully expected the Republicans to stick to their traditional script, and ignore democratic reformers in the Middle East in favor of the usual dictators, tyrants and strongmen.
I didn't figure on George W. Bush, the most unlikely figure in the world to make democratic reform a centerpiece of Middle East policy. In a post-9/11 world, he concluded that there was no safety in the old "stability", only societies forced to choose between rule by thugs or theocrats, who would continue to demonize the West in order to redirect the anger and resentment of their people against an external "other", i.e. "decadent" democracies. Something had to be done to change that dynamic, otherwise it was only a matter of time before we were confronted with an alliance of terrorist networks equipped by their state sponsors with terrifying weapons that could kill hundreds of thousands and wreak social and economic turmoil. He concluded that confronting dictatorial regimes that were actively pursuing such weapons would be far less costly than fighting them when they had achieved their aims and had become emboldened.
It has now become fashionable to deride the so-called "neocons" as Machiavellians ruthlessly plotting global American hegemony, but an objective reading of their writings reveals an idealism rooted in the belief that America should stand with the forces of democratic reform and liberalism in places like the Middle East. Given a choice between coddling dictators and championing rule of law, the equality of women, and a free press, we should be unapologetically in favor of the latter. That support would not necessarily have to be military in nature, but diplomacy must to be backed with a credible threat of force or else it is ineffectual, especially in dealing with despotic regimes.
Now, with the neocons discredited and the general consensus that post-Saddam Iraq is ungovernable, we are back to a weird nostalgia for the dictators. James Baker is suddenly considered the voice of reasonableness by his erstwhile Democratic critics, even as he urges cutting deals with the likes of Iran's Ahmadinejad and Syria's Assad, who he assures us with a straight face have a long-term interest in a stable Iraq. Meanwhile, Iraqi democrats who risked their lives to elect a representative (if flawed and ineffectual) government are to be ignored. And bizarrely, Israel, the only true democracy in the region, is treated as a bargaining chip as we pursue the delusion that a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the magic key that will resolve Sunni-Shia bloodletting in Iraq and cause Iran to abandon its nuclear program and ambitions to dominate the region. And these are the "realists"!
I'm not sure I agree with all of this, but it is making me think again about what it is I do believe. I tried to puzzle my own thoughts out over on Centerfeud, and I thought I'd post them here as well:
This is a very good piece. So good in fact that I'm having difficulty ordering my thoughts...but that seems to be par for the course these days for most people when the topic at hand is Iraq. So i think I'll take my disparate comments, number them and hope they hang together as some sort of a whole.
1) I agee that what is passing today as "Realpolitick" is pure nonsense. But it is worse than that. It is truly reprehensible. It is one thing to say in 1956, "We sympathize with the Hugarians who are fighting and dying for their freedom, but there is little we can do. Soviet retaliation in Western Europe has the potential for killing millions, so we must reluctantly stand on the sidelines." It is quite another to say today to Middle Eastern democrats today, "Hey good luck. I hope you have a nice trip on your way to the jihadist killing fields. But it is your own fault you know....didn't you realize that you are nothing but a backward Arab?"
2) I have some sympathy with those who think the neo-cons, in their democratic zeal, have displayed jacobinite tendencies that have tended to undercut their own cause. However, this means that there are errors that could be corrected...it doesn't mean that the idea of Middle Eastern democracy itself is doomed.
3) What we need, and what your piece represents I think, is some sort of "realistic idealism". We needn't repudiate the ideals we think societies ought to embrace. We needn't throw women back into the dark ages, or simply allow them to be kept there by ignoring their plight. But that also doesn't mean we have to impose things with "revolutinary purity." We simply need to back liberal forces where ever they arise...but that has to mean more than just allowing them to attend cocktail parties in DC while they while away lives of exile.
Make sure you go over and read the entire post on Centerfeud.
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