Democracy gets the benefit of the doubt

We thought we’d heard every possible criticism of President Bush’s speech on Palestinian reform. We were wrong. The most extraordinary criticism – and the one that most begs a response – came from Israel’s Knesset Speaker Avram Burg, who called the President “childish.” He said, “A country which has not succeeded in 40 years in moving Fidel Castro when he is 90 km from Miami, suddenly moves around presidents around the world?” This is political infantility. (sic)

We thought we’d heard every possible criticism of President Bush’s speech on Palestinian reform. We were wrong. The most extraordinary criticism – and the one that most begs a response – came from Israel’s Knesset Speaker Avram Burg, who called the President “childish.” He said, “A country which has not succeeded in 40 years in moving Fidel Castro when he is 90 km from Miami, suddenly moves around presidents around the world?” This is political infantility. (sic)

Aside from his syntactical problem, Mr. Burg suffers from serious political stultification. Castro is not the same, Mr. Burg. He poses no threat to us. And while we wish the Cuban people the same democratic governance you have and the President hopes the Palestinian people will someday have, the U.S. doesn’t actually go around “moving presidents” on a whim. Think Cold War instead – the U.S. did the biggest regime change in history without firing a shot.

Mr. Bush wasn’t offering a plan in the Rose Garden, he was expressing a vision. Like Ronald Reagan in Berlin. Mr. Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall.” He too was faulted for the shortage of detail.

But Mr. Reagan assumed that behind the Wall were people who would be moved by the fact that the American President put the prestige of his office behind THEIR dreams and THEIR efforts. He did not fail them in that, but the lion’s share of the work was done on THEIR side – Russian “refuseniks,” Solidarity, and then the night that thousands of Berliners took their political future into their own hands – literally – and tore the Wall down. They didn’t ask us to do it, but they had to know we would be there if they did.

And that is the political imperative for Mr. Bush.

His speech was actually remarkable for the assumption of universal political aspirations among oppressed people; the assumption that there are Palestinians who want something other than death at an early age. The assumption that there are Palestinians who want more from their government than corrupt ministers and bomb factories in residential neighborhoods. Palestinians who, if they believe Washington will stick with them, may be prepared to take the risks for independence that are required to bring Palestinian society into the 21st century as the first Arab democracy.

Do those Palestinians really exist? Is it possible that the constructive social and political energy that welled up in Russia and Central Europe after generations of communist repression exists in Palestine as well? To be honest, we are highly skeptical. But Mr. Bush is willing at least to ask the question – which is more than one can say about Mr. Burg and the other naysayers, nitpickers and professional whiners. And as long as the President is prepared to stand behind Palestinian democrats as they emerge from their bunkers, we think he and democracy should get the benefit of the doubt.