Democracy for Muslims?
Just a year and a half ago mobs were raging through Tehran demanding the ouster of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had claimed re-election after a dubious vote-count. Today mobs are fighting in Cairo over whether President Hosni Mubarak should resign. Mobs in Tunisia have already ousted the dictator there, and unrest threatens other Arab countries.
The American response to all these upheavals has been consistent: allow peaceful demonstrations, avoid violence, exercise restraint and move toward real democracy. Until President George W Bush started urging democracy on Arab countries, the American policy was simply to deal with whoever held power and not meddle in internal affairs.
But we face a clash between American interests and American values. Except for Iran, the regimes threatened by the massive protests have been friendly to the United States. Egypt, which had been aligned with the Soviet Union from about 1955 through 1973, switched to the American side after US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger brokered a separation of forces deal with Israel after the Yom Kippur War that saved an Egyptian army division. As the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, Egypt has been a valuable ally in keeping the Middle East from exploding for nearly forty years.
But Egypt was never a democracy. The Free Officers Association, which overthrew King Farouk, established military rule, first under Gamal Abdel Nasser, then under Anwar Sadat and now under Hosni Mubarak. Nasser suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood and executed its founder, but the group survives to this day and has inspired Hamas and Al Qaida. Polls and results of legislative elections indicate that radical Islam has mass support in Egypt, and if the military would surrender power, the Muslim Brotherhood and perhaps other Islamist forces would be major players in national politics. This could mean the end of the peace treaty with Israel, more arms for Hamas, perhaps even war.
So we Americans are on the horns of a cruel dilemma: our values favor democracy for Egypt and all other countries, but our interests favor backing the authoritarian regimes friendly to us and not too hostile to Israel. The Shah of Iran said that under similar circumstances "The Americans threw me out like a dead mouse." (1)
We Americans must first recognize that we cannot impose a government on any country against the will of its people. Under President Bush we were able to depose Sadam Hussein and conduct elections, but the winners were not the Iraqis that the Bush Administration had supported. Similarly, we deposed the Taliban in Afghanistan, but are still fighting them today, almost ten years later. We can provide arms and military intelligence to friendly governments, but the Islamic Revolution in Iran showed that these may not be enough to keep power.
But we are also not obligated to throw Mubarak (or anyone else) out "like a dead mouse." If that is how we treat our friends, we will not have many friends, nor will we deserve many. The US did not "lose" China, Cuba or Iran and we are not responsible for "losing Egypt" now; these countries never were ours to lose. The more we try to influence events, the more we are blamed for how things turn out----which is often badly. Just look at Gaza, where American-inspired fair elections resulted in a Hamas victory, later implemented by force.
So we must tread a fine line between advocating human rights for all and unwelcome meddling. Stability that rests on raw power is inherently unstable, while stability that rests on democracy (such as in Israel, Europe and most of Latin America) is durable. Of course we should advocate democracy, but recognize that it must arise from the will of the people, and their will is often very different from our own.
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(1) My Turn to Speak by Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, MacMillan, 1991.
The American response to all these upheavals has been consistent: allow peaceful demonstrations, avoid violence, exercise restraint and move toward real democracy. Until President George W Bush started urging democracy on Arab countries, the American policy was simply to deal with whoever held power and not meddle in internal affairs.
But we face a clash between American interests and American values. Except for Iran, the regimes threatened by the massive protests have been friendly to the United States. Egypt, which had been aligned with the Soviet Union from about 1955 through 1973, switched to the American side after US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger brokered a separation of forces deal with Israel after the Yom Kippur War that saved an Egyptian army division. As the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, Egypt has been a valuable ally in keeping the Middle East from exploding for nearly forty years.
But Egypt was never a democracy. The Free Officers Association, which overthrew King Farouk, established military rule, first under Gamal Abdel Nasser, then under Anwar Sadat and now under Hosni Mubarak. Nasser suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood and executed its founder, but the group survives to this day and has inspired Hamas and Al Qaida. Polls and results of legislative elections indicate that radical Islam has mass support in Egypt, and if the military would surrender power, the Muslim Brotherhood and perhaps other Islamist forces would be major players in national politics. This could mean the end of the peace treaty with Israel, more arms for Hamas, perhaps even war.
So we Americans are on the horns of a cruel dilemma: our values favor democracy for Egypt and all other countries, but our interests favor backing the authoritarian regimes friendly to us and not too hostile to Israel. The Shah of Iran said that under similar circumstances "The Americans threw me out like a dead mouse." (1)
We Americans must first recognize that we cannot impose a government on any country against the will of its people. Under President Bush we were able to depose Sadam Hussein and conduct elections, but the winners were not the Iraqis that the Bush Administration had supported. Similarly, we deposed the Taliban in Afghanistan, but are still fighting them today, almost ten years later. We can provide arms and military intelligence to friendly governments, but the Islamic Revolution in Iran showed that these may not be enough to keep power.
But we are also not obligated to throw Mubarak (or anyone else) out "like a dead mouse." If that is how we treat our friends, we will not have many friends, nor will we deserve many. The US did not "lose" China, Cuba or Iran and we are not responsible for "losing Egypt" now; these countries never were ours to lose. The more we try to influence events, the more we are blamed for how things turn out----which is often badly. Just look at Gaza, where American-inspired fair elections resulted in a Hamas victory, later implemented by force.
So we must tread a fine line between advocating human rights for all and unwelcome meddling. Stability that rests on raw power is inherently unstable, while stability that rests on democracy (such as in Israel, Europe and most of Latin America) is durable. Of course we should advocate democracy, but recognize that it must arise from the will of the people, and their will is often very different from our own.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) My Turn to Speak by Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, MacMillan, 1991.
posted by Gerald S Glazer at 3:22 PM
2 Comments:
Pesident Bush was right to push democracy. Where he went wrong, and where Obama/Clinton are going wrong, is conflating "democracy" with elections. Democracy will be no better than any other form of government unless it is undergirded by good values that are first institutionalized in the form of such institutions as the rule of law, independent judiciary, individual rights, property rights and the protection of the rights of minorities. SO there is no clash in American values with American interests if we do not support "democracy" which consists of "one man, one vote, one time."
Yes, Jim is absolutely correct and it is why Egypt will become an Islamic State similar to Iran.
In the Arab and Muslim world there are only two forms of government: autocratic rule (by monarchs (e.g. Saudi Arabi and Jordan) or military (e.g. Egypt) leaders, and Islamic republics (e.g. Iran). Of course these are both really auticratic, the difference is one is run by a family or hunta and the other is run by a single party.
Arabs and Muslims use democracies not to bring human rights or liberty to their citizens, it is simply a way to put in Islamic rule. That is, democracy one time only. A poll done by the Pew Foundation a few years ago found that about 75% of Egyptians favor an Islamic Republic with Sharia Law. If there is a democratic process in Egypt they will vote in an Islamic Republic.
This is not a guess we have seen this time and time again. It happened in Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Tunisia, and if Egypt becomes democratic it is inevitable to occur there as well.
So Jim is absolutely correct, Democracy in the West means something totally different from in the Arab and Muslim world because it NEVER includes Bill of Rights.
It is the Bill of Rights which makes our democracy what it is not a demcracy itself. A benign autocrat is far far better than a democracy without a Bill of Rights. Afterall, Hitler came to power in a democracy.
In light of this, it is quite disturbing that the President of the USA came out in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Whether Hussein Obama is a Muslim or not is irrelevent but his attitude toward Islam, is essential to every Amercan. The fact that Hussein Obama gave support in Egypt of the terrorist group that fathered Al Queda (i.e. The Muslim Brotherhood) and murdered Anwar Sadat (the only enlightened Arab leader of the past 60 years) is as Muslim an opinion as possible.
Hussein Obama may not be a Muslim but if he acts like a Muslim then what is the difference?
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