QandO

June 24, 2004

Even The New Republic's Editors "get it" ... well sorta
Posted by McQ

The editors of "The New Republic" ask rhetorically, "Were We Wrong" about supporting the war in Iraq? After much hemming and hawing, rehashing and reviewing, stuttering and stammering, they say:

With all these tragedies, how can there still be a moral case for the war in Iraq? Because Iraqis today--no matter how scared and how bitter--are, in some meaningful sense, free. From the hundreds of Iraqi newspapers to the roughly 40 new Iraqi political parties to the local councils being elected across the country, Iraqis are developing the independent civil society and open politics that the Middle East desperately needs. Could this embryonic freedom be extinguished? Of course. Given the militias roaming the country, Iraq's political future could well be decided by guns rather than ballots. If another dictator murders his way to power, or the country dissolves into violent fiefdoms, the war will have proved not just a strategic failure, but a moral one as well.

But that is clearly not what Iraqis want. Polls show that most Iraqis desire a democracy with Islamic characteristics and think they will achieve one. Prominent Iraqis like Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani don't denounce the United States for bringing too much democracy, but for not bringing it quickly enough.

Well there you go ... you weren't wrong, were you? Isn't it enough that the result of this war with "all these tragedies" is the chance for a free Iraq ... a chance not avialable before the war? Couple that with the fact that a regime that was a major supporter of terrorism is gone and you have the daily double.

But more importantly, as has been claimed by supporters of the war, it has opened not only a dialogue about democracy, but demands for it in other Middle Eastern countires:

And, throughout the Arab and Muslim world, people are watching. They may not hate America any less than they did before the war--for the time being, they may even hate it more. But, with the fall of Iraq's dictator, they can finally envision the fall of their own. And the new discourse emerging in Iraq is reverberating across its borders, changing what is conceivable. In March, demonstrators gathered outside the parliament building in Damascus, demanding an end to the country's longstanding state of emergency. A few days later, Kurds rioted in the country's northeast, prompting eleven Syrian human rights groups to blame the unrest on "the absence of democratic life and public freedoms." That same month, a group of prominent Arab intellectuals and activists met in Alexandria, Egypt, where they issued what famed Egyptian dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim called "a sort of Arab Magna Carta" demanding reform. "In the Middle East today, you talk about food, you talk about football--and you talk about democracy," a young Egyptian political scientist named Mohammed Kamal recently told Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl. "There is a serious debate going on in the Arab world about their own societies. The United States has triggered this debate."

Does anyone think these events were possible or even probable without the war with Iraq?

Which brings us to some of the left's favorite handwringing. Although the editors of TNR mostly avoided it, they had to mention it ... "they hate us".

Big deal. Its not like its something new, folks. Raphael Patai, author of the seminal "The Arab Mind" (1976) reminds us of a bit of history in that regard. Patai quotes Wilfred Cantwell Smith's writing in the mid '50s where Smith states "Most westerners have simply no inkling of how deep and fierce is the hate, especially of the West, that has gripped the modernizing Arab" As Patai notes, "a few years later, Bernard Lewis made an almost identical observation in speaking of 'the mood and wish that united many if not most Arabs' in 1955: it was, he found, that of 'revulsion for the West, and the wish to spite and humiliate it.'

In announcing the Egyptian/Russian Arms deal in 1955, President Nasser gave "dramatic and satisfying expression" to this underlying hate of the West:

"In the twilight world of popular myths and images, the West is the source of all evil -- and the west is a single whole" -- Nasser

Nothing has changed in that preception since 1955, nor will it anytime soon ... so to the left: "Get over it"! Understand, as the right seems to have done, that being "liked" is just not as important as being respected and getting the job done.

Concluding, TNR's editors almost get it right:

The outcome of that debate is in Arab hands, not American ones. Even in Iraq, although we must still assist as best we can, our control is slipping away. Ultimately, it is this new, bewildering, liberating debate, rather than U.S. force of arms, upon which our hopes for Iraq, and the whole Arab world, now rest. Americans no longer have the power to redeem this war. But Iraqis still can.

What don't they get right? There's nothing for the Americans to "redeem" in this war. By their own writing, the editors list the redeeming qualities of the war, qualities which are now extant only because of America and Americans (and the coalition of the willing). What is now in Iraqi hands isn't its redemption, but taking it to fruition.

One only hopes they're able to do that.

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