The Beginning Of The End in Iraq?

Back before the U.S. invaded Iraq, a number of worst case scenarios were advanced by anti-war activists, with the effects of the invasion depicted as rippling through the region, toppling friendly regimes and resulting in general chaos. These of course were largely dismissed or ridiculed by proponents of the war. But now David Brooks has apparently reconsidered. In After The Fall he envisions just that occurring through the course of a "thirty year war" which follows a U.S. withdrawal:

In fall 2007, the United States began to withdraw troops from Iraq, and so began the Second Thirty Years’ War. This war was a bewildering array of small and vast conflicts, which flared and receded and flared again across the entire Middle East, but which were joined by a common theme.

The essence of all this disorder was that the Arab nation-states lost control. Subnational groups — like Hezbollah and the Mahdi Army — and supranational groups — like loosely connected terror networks, the new Sunni and Shiite Leagues and the satellite television networks — went from strength to strength while central national governments toppled and fell. The collapse of national governments led to a power vacuum that the more authentic and deeply rooted social groups sought to fill.

Meanwhile, Spencer Ackerman reminds us that before the war we were often hearing quite the opposite from the pro-war side.

These scenarios have their value, of course, and at times they may even prove to be what occurs. But for the most part they have to be recognized for what they are - a doctrinaire trip down the slipperly slope. The proponents of all of these scenarios have one thing in common - they underestimate the ability of tyrants and dictators to control their populations and hold on to power.

Brooks on Middle East Democracy

Today's column by David Brooks is worth reading, if you are able to peek behind the firewall. The bulk of the column is an unfortunately brief synopsis of the debate of two experts on the Middle East, Reuel Gerecht and Jeffrey Goldberg. Gerecht argued that democracy will in the short-term result in extremist governments with a profoundly anti-Israel bias, but that this pain is a necessary part of developing the institutions integral to democracy:

The only way to reform the Middle East, Gerecht concluded, is by changing political institutions and enduring as the spirit of democratic self-government slowly changes society. There will be a period of fever, but the fever will break the disease.

Goldberg argued that even if the roots of democracy were to survive such an initial period, such a period could easily stretch on for more than a century of jihadism against Israel and, internally, tolerance of such acts as "honor killings".

In Goldberg's view, cultural reform has to precede political reform. The West should continue to champion the Arab world's liberal modernizers, who believe in pluralism and human rights and who may have deeper roots in society than we think.

Gerecht notes that democractic movements have made some real advances; Goldberg notes that even with their participation in democracy key regional players such as Hamas and Hezbollah will always embrace Jihad.

Brooks himself sees the Bush Administration as taking Gerecht's position that institutions shape behavior, and "hanging tough" on the issue of democratic reform. And he argues that neither model is "winning" but that a worse outcome would be to return to the stablility of autocratic regimes such as those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia which spawed 9/11. (Brooks doesn't mention the sad state of democratic reform in those nations.)

Rather than asking "who is right", perhaps the better approach is to ask how the two models can complement each other. That is, accept Goldberg's position that we need to change hearts and minds now to move people away from jihadism, but also to accept Gerecht's position that we need to build the institutions of democracy in order for it to be sustainable over the long term. Even if we assume the best of intentions, the Bush Administration's policies appear to be paving the way to jihadism. I'm not sure that Brooks would disagree; I think to the degree he treats the models as incompatible it is so that he can praise the Bush Administration for its embrace of the institutional approach without confronting its present failings.

Everything Old Is New... to Thomas Friedman

Behind the Firewall, the New York Times' ostensible expert on the Middle East writes,

When you watch the violence unfolding in the Middle East today it is easy to feel that you’ve been to this movie before and that you know how it ends - badly. But we actually have not seen this movie before. Something new is unfolding, and we’d better understand it.

What we are seeing in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon is an effort by Islamist parties to use elections to pursue their long-term aim of Islamizing the Arab-Muslim world.

This is new? Are we using geological measures of time? (Ten thousand years ago there were no elections at all, and now, suddenly....)

While Friedman suggests that this phenomenon is mostly a concern in nations like Iraq or Lebanon, or in the Palestinian Territories, where political factions may also contol their own militias. Is it truly a secret to Thomas Friedman that there have long been significant concerns over the possibility that democratic elections in the Middle East that anti-Western and Islamist groups may gain power or even control of the government if free elections were truly permitted in Saudi Arabia or Egypt?

The world needs to understand what is going on here: the little flowers of democracy that were planted in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories are being crushed by the boots of Syrian-backed Islamist militias who are desperate to keep real democracy from taking hold in this region and Iranian-backed Islamist militias desperate to keep modernism from taking hold.

Is the problem, then, that there are Islamist parties, that there are parties which control militias, or just that there are Islamist parties that control militias? And in which of those regions are the Islamist parties actually complaining about democracy, or fearing that it might spread? When you're winning elections you generally want democracy to spread (even if you aren't particularly to maintaining it in the longer-term).

To Friedman, democracy seems to mean "You should hold free and fair elections, and vote for whomever you want... as long as you elect the right person and party." Am I wrong, or are the shifts in mindset required for democracy and progressive government to take hold largely generational in nature - if you grow up with them, they seem like second-nature, but they're hard to impose upon a population which is used to something else. (And, unfortunately, they seem easier to tear down than to build up.) To state the obvious, even in the absence of private militias holding an election, even if it is free or fair, is no guarantee that a nation will be transformed into a democracy, nor is it a guarantee that the elected leader will be the person Thomas Friedman would prefer.