The Fallacies Of American
Democracy For Iraq
By Terrell E. Arnold
11-14-3
This week US civil administrator for Iraq, L. Paul (Jerry) Bremer, was
called suddenly back to Washington for consultations on the obviously
worsening security situation in Iraq. Bremer's return was accompanied
by grumblings from the Bush core team (Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the
President) about the apparent ineffectiveness of the Iraqi Governing
Council. Since the beginning of November more than forty American
combat deaths have occurred; U.S. forces have lost three helicopters:
American forces have gone to a warlike footing in the Sunni Triangle,
and at least two direct attacks have been made on Bremer's
headquarters. Meanwhile, the CIA predicts that the situation will get
worse, an appraisal that Bremer is reported to share.. It appears
indeed time to review the bidding.
One hopes that in this hastily called review, the situation and
outlook for Iraq would be looked at squarely. Up to this point, the
chances for that occurring, however, have appeared slim, because the
administration, and by extension Bremer's team in country, has
appeared fixated on carrying out the Bush scheme for transforming Iraq
into an American style democracy. The habit up to now has been to look
right by what US civil and military forces are doing in Iraq and to
focus merely on how the Iraqis are reacting to the occupation and
specifically on their growing resistance to the occupation. The
answers to those questions are, of course, terribly important, but
they will be useful only if they cause the US to review and modify its
Iraq agenda.
On the face of things, the US agenda has changed several times
already, from protecting the United States from a monster with weapons
of mass destruction, to ridding Iraq of a brutal tyrant, to
"liberating" the Iraqi people, and finally to creating a democracy in
Iraq as the first stage in democratizing the entire region. This
transition, perhaps better called a policy retreat,, has convinced
many governments and people that the US does not know what it is
doing. The notion of quickly or ever transforming Middle Eastern
countries into western democracies bespeaks at best a superficial
appreciation of the peoples and the problems involved, but even worse,
it reveals a severe lack of understanding of how our system actually
is working these days.
American democracy today is in serious trouble. At the national level,
the process of electing a president, or representatives and senators
has become so expensive that only the wealthy or candidates supported
by them can play. The process has been co-opted and corrupted by
increasingly concentrated ownership of media and business, including
banking, transportation, manufacturing, and energy. Legislative
programs and goals largely focus on catering to the large
organizations and the wealthy contributors. Our system was designed to
work on a basis of majority rule, but effective control by a shrinking
pool of elitists who also control both parties through contributions,
has led to a situation in which not even the majority, albeit often
invoked for political discussion, can decide any important issue.
In the meantime, majority rule has become an obsolete concept of
governance in any complex society. Majority rule was a great step
forward from absolute monarchy or despotism, but it is an inadequate
concept for our time. Small but powerful groups have preempted the
system. Consultations downward are > weak and often superficial. Many
minority and even majority interests are being pushed aside for
benefits to elites. Therefore what we are trying to export is really a
theoretical concept that does not work in this country. How can we
expect it to work in Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East? > Majority
rule poses special problems in Iraq, and these have already been well
identified. Since the majority of the people (around 60%) are Shiites,
the fear of Sunnis, Kurds, Christians, Jews, as well as advocates of
secular governance is that rule by majority, especially a
fundamentalist one, would result in suppressing their interests and
beliefs. Saddam Hussein sidestepped this problem by running a secular
government, but he also played a preference game that made his Sunni
compatriots (about 30% of the population) a defacto majority for
governing purposes.
Bush's administration is behaving like a minority government with
majority acquiescence. Conservative Christians, media and business
elites, and the Israelis are setting the tone and calling the tune for
a government that is systematically undoing generations of social
legislation that was targeted on the American population at large.
This approach, more than any other posture of the Bush administration,
makes it clear that neither he nor his key team members understand or
necessarily care to know what the problems of instability and conflict
in the world are actually about.
The Bush argument is that "democratizing" Iraq will make the world a
safer place. There is no evidence for this assertion. People who are
left out of the political and economic mainstreams in countries such
as the Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt, India, and numerous others are
the principal sources of the world's terrorists. A system of
governance that depends on the will of the majority that elected it,
and therefore focuses preferentially on the needs and wishes of that
majority is exactly the troublemaker we already have. People who are
not served by the system fight back however they can.
In our own system, key players have become totally preoccupied with
the process. If you watch the President, you will readily see that his
main business is to keep his party in power and to raise money for the
next election. Since election, even in a time he avers is a crisis, he
has spent easily a quarter of his time as President cultivating
funding sources for elections, not only his own campaign but also for
the campaigns of other Republicans. American taxpayers, of all
political persuasions, paid the bill for this President to raise money
for his reelection and for his own party by providing the best
equipped airplane in the world, Air Force One, and the staffing
infrastructure to support him, and of course paying his presidential
salary while he is at the ranch raising money for the party. Other
presidents have done this, but not as fulsomely as Bush.
The point here however is that our system at present is too occupied
with the process of getting people elected, and not nearly enough with
the business of running the country. The two are not one and the same,
and no other country should copy this process, because it is
fundamentally flawed in ways that make it incapable of providing
government of all the people, by all the people and for all the
people. Our system of governance grew up to meet the needs of an
essentially white European society with differing religious and
political views. Up until recently it appeared to be coping moderately
well with the order of diversity the country now encompasses.
This discussion puts entirely aside the perverse notion of our
insisting that the Iraqis or others must adopt our system of
government. Democracy by fiat has never been the principle of our
system. Forcing a system of government on another state is a peculiar
application of the idea of popular governance.
Iraqis in particular have experienced centuries of rule by outsiders
from the arrival of the Osmanli, the Ottoman Turks, in the 16th
century to the > departure of the British in the 1950s. Iraqi
nationalists threw out the British to form their own government only
to discover all too soon that they were under the thumb of an
indigenous tyrant. The Iraqi Governing Council is handicapped because
it is tagged as a US tool. As such, it is unlikely to prosper unless
it hands authority over to leaders chosen by the Iraqis. The longer
that handover is delayed the more violence will occur, and the lesson
of early this week in Nasiriyah with the death of 17 Italian soldiers
will be repeated. The CIA Station Chief in Baghdad appears to have
delivered this message loud and clear.
The real message of the situation in Iraq is that broadly
representative government, most likely chosen by traditional tribal
and other community means, is the next vital step. The situation is
simply too toxic to embrace an outside idea. Some new representative
forms of governance are also needed to deal with Iraq's ethnically,
educationally, religiously, and economically complex society.
Ironically the secularism introduced by Saddam had that potential and
still does. But new forms or accommodations of each community's wishes
must grow out of the traditions, customs, religions, felt needs, and
preferences of the people seeking to be governed. The forms cannot be
transplanted en masse or quickly.
There is no one size fits all, e.g., western democracy, solution to
the problem. Thus there is no real solution the United States can
provide other than early departure and a will-from outside-to help the
Iraqi people find their own way. The argument against early American
departure is that, if we leave, chaos will reign. With conditions as
bad as they are, that is a hollow argument. Since outsiders and
associated nationals are the main targets of much of the violence,
things could actually calm down if the Coalition withdrew. In that
event, perhaps the United Nations-with US and broad international
support--could be persuaded to take on monitoring and development
support functions, if those were acceptable to the Iraqi people.
Obviously the United States can and should promote representative
government in the Middle East. But it is incapable of directly
providing a workable model for Iraqi governance. The growing chaos
shows clearly that US efforts to do so are unlikely to be accepted.
The writer is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer of the US
Department of State. He will welcome comment at
wecanstopit@hotmail.com
"life is like a mushroom, they feed you ***** and keep you in the dark"
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