THE WANDERER, FEBRUARY 10, 2005
JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH
Building Democracy
The Iraqi elections came off far more peacefully
than many of President Bush's critics expected, and Bush
is hailing them as vindication of his War on Terror,
which has morphed into a War for Democracy.
Though we can all be glad that relatively little
violence occurred, Bush's rejoicing in this "resounding
success" is otherwise unwarranted. If the war is wrong in
principle, no results can justify it. We may be relieved
that the results aren't worse, but that's another matter.
At this point it's not even clear what those results
are. We gather that Iraq's Shi'ite majority welcomes
majority rule, and the Sunni minority doesn't, but this
is hardly surprising. The sober advocates of democracy
have always stipulated that a legitimate government must
enjoy the trust of its minorities and honor individual
rights, and in Iraq this very much remains to be seen. A
cautious optimism can say no more than "So far, so good."
This time even Bush knows better than to say, "Mission
accomplished."
Without belittling the courage of the Iraqis who
braved death threats to vote, merely carrying off an
election can hardly be hailed as the triumph of
democracy. At the very least a democracy has to function
effectively, and for more than one day.
Few Americans have any idea what the Iraqis were
actually voting about; we know only that they did vote.
All very well, but what happens next? Will the rule of
law become a habit? It will take years to determine that,
and [much] longer to test whether, as Bush hopes, the
Iraqi example will prove contagious for the entire
Mideast.
Maybe the Sunnis, whose leaders boycotted the
elections, will fatalistically acquiesce to superior
power; maybe that power will prove tolerable, compared
with the country's recent past. The sooner things settle
down, the sooner American troops are likely to clear out.
But this is how Westerners think; whether passionate
Muslims will think this way is an entirely different
matter.
In the short term, the success of the elections does
appear to be a defeat for the resistance and al-Qaeda.
Prospective suicide bombers may wonder if the struggle is
worth their lives. Democracy, whatever may be said
against it, does have the general effect of tempering
apocalyptic furies. We can hope that even the fanatics
will grudgingly feel, without necessarily saying so, that
it's time to "move on."
But this is the rosy scenario. Only the most foolish
optimist would assume its probability in a region known
for sectarian furies and long memories recently
intensified by a foreign invasion by infidels, where the
dominant power has played ball with the invaders. These
are not people to be mollified by slogans of freedom and
democracy.
In its present and understandable euphoria, the
administration, feeling that its goals are being realized
on schedule, can easily forget that, as even Condoleezza
Rice acknowledges, "the hard work is still ahead."
This implies that the 1,400 American deaths in Iraq
so far, to say nothing of the countless Iraqi deaths, are
only the beginning.
Why They Hate Us
I often reflect that serious Catholics may have a
special affinity with serious Muslims. Catholics
understand that political arrangements are only
provisional, not absolute goods. We may be called on to
die for the faith; but for democracy?
Many pro-war American pundits, who know just enough
history to make facile parallels between this war and
World War II, are missing the point. World War II isn't
an important part of the Muslim memory, and the militant
Islamists have nothing in common with the Axis powers.
A more useful analogy might be this: The Muslims
regard a Western invasion as the Catholics of Eastern
Europe, not so long ago, regarded Communist conquest --
as a mortal assault on their religion and way of life.
Those who take their faith seriously must regard
resistance as a holy duty. To portray this as hatred of
freedom is to misconceive the whole situation.
Muslims now hate and fear Americans, whom they see
as both aggressive and immoral, as Catholics in Poland
and Czechoslovakia once hated and feared the Soviet
Union.
It's hard for most Americans to imagine that anyone
could see the United States as anything but the
standard-bearer of liberty. "Infidels" seems a quaint and
almost comical word to apply to us. But we should try to
think of ourselves as, in Muslim eyes, the functional
equivalent of the Bolshevik menace.
Putting the shoe on the other foot isn't something
Americans are particularly good at. Bush seems especially
unable to grasp why people of other cultures might dread
not only our power, but the morality they fear we would
impose on them, just as Communism brought divorce,
abortion, and other evils to the nations it claimed to
liberate. So when we say "liberation," is it any wonder
that the Muslims hear "slavery"?
Bush, like many others, insists that our enemies
"hate freedom." He almost never uses the word "fear." But
the obvious truth is that those enemies intensely =fear=
what Americans have come to mean by freedom, and what you
fear, you also hate.
Why should this be so hard to understand? Fifty
years ago, when America was still predominantly
Christian, our relations with the Muslim world were
distant but friendly. There were few huge moral
differences between the two worlds.
Which world has changed since then? How would
Americans then have welcomed the prospect of America
today, where you can flip on your television and watch
pornography? Is this what Muslims think they can look
forward to if we manage to Americanize them?
Bush is a devout man, but he doesn't grasp how many
pious people on this earth see him as the head of a
Godless power. Are they all wrong?
Thoughts on "Choice"
I am heartily sick of the term "pro-choice," which
even many opponents of abortion use to describe those who
are pro-abortion. Pro-slavery people weren't called
pro-choice, though the term fit them just as well -- as
long as you forgot that only the slave owner had the
"right to choose." After all, nobody was =forced= to own
a slave!
Pro-choice? Well, the mother may have a choice, but
her unborn son or daughter has none. Startling when you
put it that way, because the word "fetus" suggests a
sexless abstraction, neither male nor female.
Just thought I'd mention it. Another illustration of
my pet peeve, the way most people don't measure their
words.
You can learn a lot by listening -- even, at times,
by listening to yourself.
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