Elections in Iraq and Palestine and America
Elections in Iraq and Palestine and America
It was telling that a major U.S. newspaper that had been reporting mainly bad news from Iraq chose to run a cheerful photo yesterday of Iraqi women preparing for elections. The paper was, no doubt, cognizant of a poll in Iraq showing that nearly 85 percent of Iraqis said they planned to vote. We confidently predict that the major paper will now begin to run positive stories about the politics of a country emerging from 35 years of totalitarian hell.
Elections in Iraq and Palestine and America
It was telling that a major U.S. newspaper that had been reporting mainly bad news from Iraq chose to run a cheerful photo yesterday of Iraqi women preparing for elections. The paper was, no doubt, cognizant of a poll in Iraq showing that nearly 85 percent of Iraqis said they planned to vote. We confidently predict that the major paper will now begin to run positive stories about the politics of a country emerging from 35 years of totalitarian hell.
Elections in Iraq were not the point of overthrowing Saddam. Iraq in our view posed an unacceptable threat to the U.S. and, after 9-11, the American government was rightly unwilling to tolerate Saddam’s unambiguous thwarting of UN’s resolutions.
Elections are, however, what we have come to. So it is fair to note that the point is not only to choose the leader of the moment, it is to choose the direction of society. A single election in Iraq or Palestine will not produce what Americans, with 200 years of experience in choosing leaders from school boards and town councils to presidents, have come to understand as the culture of democracy. But the acceptable cannot be the enemy of the better; or the better the enemy of the best. Only the development of a robust civil society can produce the conditions under which a true democratic government will grow. That development is complicated and almost never follows a straight line.
Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State designate, told her confirmation panel:
The world should really apply what Natan Sharansky called the “town square test.” If a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment and physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society. And we cannot rest until every person living in a fear society has finally won their freedom. In the Middle East, President Bush has broken with six decades of excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in hoping to purchase stability at the price of liberty. The stakes could not be higher. As long as the broader Middle East remains a region of tyranny and despair and anger, it will produce extremists and movements that threaten the safety of America and our friends.
As Americans, we are thrilled that she chose Sharansky as her model. (We were equally thrilled when he chose the inaugural issue of JINSA’s Journal of International Security Affairs for the exposition of his theses on democracy and civil society.) It is a high but achievable bar for emerging democracies, and concisely sums up both the problem and the promise of American foreign policy. The idea of creating “little Americas” is arrogant and unnecessary, but as a matter of national security, the spread of freedom is essential.
We wish Dr. Rice well in her tenure as Secretary of State – rarely have we had one with so clearly enunciated a philosophical underpinning for decisions she will make.
And we wish the people of Iraq well as they embark on an historic journey into the nearly uncharted waters of Middle Eastern democracy. They will vote in an imperfect, incomplete and muddy election – something not unknown in American history – but vote we think they will and the hopes of people far beyond the borders of Iraq will be riding on their choices.