... primarily because of President "ADD" Bush. A very good Washington Post
opinion piece calls for gradual yet persistant liberalization.
The authors write: On the one hand, demanding "instant democracy" -- that is, immediate elections -- would be unwise, perhaps even catastrophic. Most Arab regimes would view open, transparent elections as a threat and would call on the vast array of tools at their disposal to manipulate, marginalize, defeat or even neutralize their opponents.... if the United States arm-twisted Arab regimes enough to compel free and fair elections, the most likely victors would be Islamists, the only popular force with a ready-made organizational infrastructure, the mosque. Islamists would be delighted to use liberal means (elections) to promote illiberal ends (the creation of theocratic states) -- hardly the preferred outcome.
On the other hand, pursuing "business as usual" in the Arab world -- that is, talking about political reform but doing virtually nothing to advance it -- only hands victory to the Islamists.
Does anyone doubt that the Bush administration is quickly hurtling towards the first hand -- a catastrophic rush to immediate elections in order to declare victory in time for the '04 election?
The authors believe that democratization in the ME is absolutely essential and that,
Liberalization is a messy, difficult, time-consuming process. It means sometimes working with -- and sometimes working against -- Arab leaders to advance a strategy of opening political space; encouraging freer, more responsible media; increasing participation for women in public life; modernizing educational systems; improving justice systems and instituting incremental political reforms.
This requires a master politician's sense of when to cajole, when to praise and when to twist arms. But unlike many initiatives, it does not require a lot of money. Rather, it will need a constant supply of an even more precious commodity: consistent attention at the highest levels of government.
Bush is no master politician. Admittedly completely devoid of any ability to navigate the gray areas of politics ("... I don't do nuance"), I don't see how there is any way he can succeed in democratizing the ME. Bush's bag of political tactics contains only one kind, seemingly the only kind the entirety of the GOP seems to grasp -- brute force.
President ADD has neither the necessary courage nor patience to see Iraq through. He wants every solution to be easy and fit in his preconceived world-view. His news is objectively filtered through Condaleezza Rice and Andrew Card precisely to maintain a view unmuddied by dissent or degree. Worse, despite claims to the contrary, every decision Bush makes is driven by polls rather than prudence.
The President has not once shown consistent attention to any issue beyond one: tax cuts. Look at how long it took for him to push for the recently-passed energy and medicare bills -- legislation that hugely favors the corporate interests that form the foundation of Bush's support. In other words, Bush lacked sufficient attention span to help out even his most fervent backers by leaning on a completely submissive Congress to pass laws that are in all of their interests.
Democratizing the ME is a tremendously difficult and treacherous task, one that no other American nor other world leader has attempted successfully. In my more optimistic days, I wonder if the Iraq war has indeed handed the world the best opportunity to do so. The problem is that the war might have been the right one to fight, but at the wrong time and most certainly with the wrong president.
I can imagine Bill Clinton has the right stuff to take on this challenge. A gutsy Democratic presidential hopeful could recapture the mantle of foreign policy by stealing this issue from the neocons and making the (correct) argument that Bush will continue to bungle ME policy because his interests are only political and corporate, and that only the Democrats truly have the patience and will to see through what Bush has started.
The toughest question still remains, though - how to emerge from the Iraq war successfully. Someone to come up with a plan for this deserves to be president.