Here is an interesting issue Robert D. Kaplan raises in an op-ed in The Washington Post:
“President Bush has posited that the American experience with democracy is urgently useful to the wider world. True, but there is another side of the coin: that America basically inherited its institutions from the Anglo-Saxon tradition and thus its experience over 230 years has been about limiting despotic power rather than creating power from scratch. Because order is something we’ve taken for granted, anarchy is not something we’ve feared. But in many parts of the world, the experience has been the opposite, and so is the challenge: how to create legitimate, functioning institutions in utterly barren landscapes.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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18 Comments
And I love how the Neocon pushback against anyone who runs this eminently obvious line of reasoning is that they’re racists who don’t believe that Middle Eastern folks are capable of democracy.
Any time a conservative calls anyone ELSE a racist, they’re trying to deflect attention away from their own weak position.
True, the best defense is a good offense. Just question the agenda of the one questioning the agenda.
Ya damoon, and then if all else fails, question their patriotism.
ksafrmgrrl, why do you hate America?
Samuel Johnson: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
Condi tried to, and successfully, pre-empt any discussion of cultural differences as it relates to Democracy when during the saber rattling, declared “people used to say that blacks weren’t ready for democracy”. Blatantly ignoring all the different socioeconomic/political differences inherent in the two dissimiliar societies. Damn, that’s a lot of big words, hope I didn’t lose the Bush supporters.
“Stabilizing newly democratic regimes, and easing the development path of undemocratic ones, should be the goal for our military and diplomatic establishments.”
The above is a quote from the same article. Whatever the short term effect of our attempt to establish a stable democracy in Iraq, long term the seeds of freedom will have been sown for the Iraqi people. That is a good thing.
How can we say we support democracy when we overthrow democratic governments such as Chile, Iran before the Shah, and we are now doing everything we can to destabalize the fledgling democracy in the Occupied Territories.
Sure, we just LOVE democracy – as long as they obey our orders!
We can’t even do democracy right in the United States, given the scandals surrounding the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, and the gerrymandering Tom Delay engineered.
Hell we made Saddam Hussein cause it was coveninet for us to counter balance Iran. Our CIA TRAINED OSAMA BIN LADEN to lead the resistance to the Soviets in Afghanistan. Result: anarchy and the Taliban.
Other examples have also been cited. The record of the US as to “ceating freedom” aint good. Maybe the Iraqis sense or know that.
My limited knowledge of Islam does suggest that they might be steered in the direction of SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. But we do not do that.
The direction we are pursuing, representative democratic repubulic, willl not work in Iraq as we are seeing everyday. The “representatives” are the leaders of the various fractious religious sects. The result will be civil war.
Democratize the Mid-East, careful what you wish for Bush. But then, Bush seems to have an End Timer slant. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t care how much debt the U.S. runs up, figures no one will be around to collect it, except the righteous.
I feel that “democracy” will urn out to be a transient event in world history. However, it makes sense that transition to “democracy” needs to be an evolutionary and sometimes a revolutionary process. Any attempt to impose “democracy” on an alien people is bound to fail and fail badly!
Viva La Raza Blanco!!
The civilized Middle East has had a tradition of despotism from earliet times. After Rome went East and established a second capitol at Constantinople, Roman republican institutions faded away and the emperor’s rule reverted to the Oriental pattern of despotism. The emperor was no longer referred to as ‘imperator’ but took on the more grandiose titles of ‘basileus’, etc. The emperor wore a diadem symbolizing his absolute authority and was surrounded by a few in a grand council.
In the West, however, after Rome fell, ‘barbarian’ institutions predominated..and these were ‘republican’ in many senses. Iceland had a parliament in the early 10th century. The English Parliament also met very early. There was therefore less ‘despotic’ history in the West (by at least 2,000 years), and more of a tradition of tribal councils and limits on the leader’s authority.
It is interesting to note some of the similarities between depotic Islam and right wing Christianity. Islam has been iconoclastic for a while. Orthodoxy and Catholicism, on the other hand, have rich traditions of imagery. One of the prime motivators of the Protestant revolt was a return to iconoclasm..most Protestant churches lack statues, stained glass, and the like in favor of a simple unadorned look. Note also the tendency towards ecclesiastical domination among the two groups. Radical Christianity and Islam have more in common than they may want to admit.
The West has experienced despotic tendencies…the rule of absolute monarchs like the Bourbons in France and the Tudors in England, and perhaps the fascists and bolsheviks of recent times. But the ‘barbarian’ tradition of representation is still fresh and held dearly here in the West while it has been forgotten or never existed in the Middle East.
Interesting analysis Brian. I would note that Constantine was very strongly “Abrahaimic” religion and felt that his authority flowed from God. In Europe we saw that repeated with the “devine right” of kings and, more recently, with Milosovich who was blessed by the State Church.
In the Middle East we see two kinds of despots – secular and ‘religious’. I would submit that the secular will be easier to moderate as we are seeing with both Assad and Khadafi. Perhaps the most ‘liberal’ country in the region is Lebanon in which the various versions of Abrahamism are relegated out of control of the State.
I know some people locally who advocate theocracy. They claim that with the guidance of God it would be wonderful. I have my doubts.
Hell Ben, bush claims god tells him what to do. So does tony blair.
How is that working for both of them. I think they need verizon.
“Hey george, tony! Can ya hear me now”.
Ben,
Yes what you say is true. In any case, Middle Easterners are accustomed to despots ruling…the reason is rather less important – secular or religious. They just have not had any recent (within the past 3 or 4 thousand years) of any republican tendencies.
Note also that Oriental despotism goes even farther east..China and japan both had ‘divine right’ monarchs for millenia.
Whatever else one has to say about the dark ages and the medieval period, it isolated the western ‘barbarians’ with their tribal councils, elections, and trials by ordeal, etc. These helped, as much as the “Judaeo-Christian” tradition Christians are so fond of throwing up, to form the republican traditions of the west.
Hitler was fond of saying that National Socialism was not for export. I am of the opinion that liberty and democracy should also not be for export. It is not possible for africans and arabs to create or even maintain advanced western style democracies.
V.L.R.B!!
Actually Brian, those traditions helped a lot more that the Judeo-Christian versions of Abrahaimism did. That had given us Constantine and other monolithic rulers.
I want everyone here to read the following please:
CREATING DEMOCRACIES IS NOT OUR JOB!!!
Thank you for your attention.