April 2, 2003

THE MOTHER OF ALL OXYMORONS: ARAB DEMOCRACY

Yale Kramer

Just when I thought all the foreign-policy nonsense had been stuffed back in the bag—this thing pops out. Apparently, there is no end to the worldly mischief created by the tireless Imps of Idealism and Morality. They never rest, they never sleep. We must always be on the alert for their next noble plan, their latest high-minded proposal.

Somehow in the months-long struggle that the Bush Government has been carrying on with Old Europe over how to deal with the Iraqis, some of the Administration’s sound and realistic policies have come to be corrupted by the high ideals and chimeric visions of the past. A form of Utopianism is on the loose, a neo-Wilsonian urge to make the world safe for democracy again.

Early in the formation of Bush’s Iraq policy the aim was simple and militarily achievable—“regime change.” Then came “liberation of the Iraqi people,” and, finally, “the ultimate goal of regime change is liberal democracy.” It does not require the mind of a policy wonk to see that the idea of “liberating” the Iraqi people and transforming them into liberal democrats is a way of sugar coating the naked aggression that is implied in getting rid of Saddam. It represents a fear of our own power and of the assertion of our appropriate role of leadership in the world of nation states. Our enemies and rivals call this “unilateralism” or “imperialism.”

Like a guilt-ridden, frightened grownup who is afraid to assume his rightful responsibility lest his parents—“old Europe”—get angry with him and withdraw their affection and esteem, we make up rationalizations and fantasies that fly in the face of facts and history. So we have to tell ourselves and the hand-wringing appeasers of Europe that the Iraqis are waiting for us to liberate them, that they will dance in the streets when we arrive, that they are lining up to buy copies of the “Federalist Papers.”

Even now, after barely two weeks of war, the chimerical idea that the Iraqis are longing to breathe the free air of democracy is beginning to dissolve. The reports piling in, the pictures on our TV screen, are beginning to reveal a different pattern. It is clear that the non-Arab population in the north—the Kurds and their leaders—are our allies. At least until the war is over. They want Saddam out as much as we do, perhaps more, and they are willing to fight with us to achieve this common aim. And perhaps some but not all of the Shiites in the south are waiting to be freed from Saddam.

But everything else we see and hear suggests that a significant number of Iraqis do not feel oppressed by Saddam, and regard him as their rightful leader. There seems also to be a significant number of Iraqis who are politically unsophisticated and whose children are hungry and who would gladly kiss anyone’s hand that will feed them—George Bush, Saddam Hussein, or Sean Penn. The only Iraqi who appeared unambiguously anti-Saddam was the little chap on the first or second day of ground invasion who hammered away at Saddam’s poster image with his shoe as he grinned for the camera and danced an obsequious little dance in hope of a little baksheesh. We can’t seem to understand why there is still so much resistance to the fulfillment of our dreams—the easy toppling of this evil regime.

The images suggest an alternative view of the situation there. Perhaps there is no large un-ambivalent Iraqi populace waiting to be freed and turned into liberal democrats. Perhaps this number has been greatly exaggerated by the gurus and is merely wishful thinking in order to fit the rationalization that Iraqis are starving for democracy as well as food.

Most opponents of the idea of building a democratic nation in Iraq have also opposed the war to depose and replace Saddam. Horsefeathers does not oppose the war to rid the world of Saddam—in fact we would go even a little further, but more about that later—but only the plan to radically rebuild a nation in our own image that may not want to be changed. There are sound psychological and historical reasons for our view that democratizing Iraq is a fool’s errand.

ABOUT THE CHANGING OF HEARTS AND MINDS

As some of our readers may know Steve Rittenberg and I have been practicing and teaching psychiatry and psychoanalysis for a combined total of 75 years. We may not know a whole lot about many things, but about baseball and hearts and minds, between us, we know a thing or two. And I can tell you that it’s very, very hard to change hearts and minds. You can change behavior easily enough—all you have to do is put a pistol to somebody’s head and tell them to do what you want, and the chances are they’ll do it. But even with people who are very intelligent and highly motivated to change, it is extremely difficult to change a person’s basic attitudes (hearts and minds). Fortunately it can be done, but only after years of hard work on the part of a patient and a doctor—and most ordinary people cannot tolerate such frustrating circumstances. So only the most determined, the most unhappy, and those with a considerable amount of inner resources eventually achieve important changes in their lives.

What does all this have to do with post-war Iraq? Well, nation-building, bringing liberal democracy to Iraq requires changing the hearts and minds—the attitudes—of millions of individuals, most of whom are barely literate, unworldly, uninformed—or worse, misinformed—and happy to have an unskilled job, a roof over their heads and some food on the table. They are not unsatisfied by a life that a CBS journalist, or a Columbia University assistant professor would find boring or degrading—a regular job, a family that’s not starving, and Baghdad TV for a couple of hours every night. The only change they want is more of the same—a little more pay, a little more room, a little more food, a TV that works all the time. They already have a spiritual life—non-secular—that satisfies them. They are not interested in becoming multi-lateral or widening their spiritual horizons. The point is that most Iraqis live simple, unchanging lives and want them to continue that way. This is not to say that they are worse than people in other cultures. On the contrary, they are very much like people the world over. Most people do not want their lives to be transformed. They want to maintain the status quo. In fact people are probably hard-wired for it, the Constancy Principle, some call it. Please, no big changes.

So much for the psychology of it.

IN THE ARAB WORLD TRIBALISM TRUMPS ALL

In the last thirteen hundred years, only one Islamic country has become a democracy—Turkey. But in all that time there has never been an Arab democracy. And perhaps there never can be. Some would say that Arab ideals and representative democracy are incompatible, that in Arabic Islam state authority and religious authority have always gone together.

The majority of Arab states reached independence shortly after the Second World War. For thirty or forty years now the Arab states have been free to make whatever political or social arrangements they choose. Under the cover of some weird conglomeration of nationalism and socialism they all chose untempered autocratic power.

The reason is that the influence of fundamental Islam in the Arab world makes it deeply inhospitable to democratic and liberal principles. While the citizens of longstanding democracies accept a set of basic assumptions—the rule of law, majority rule, equality before the law, the idea of a loyal opposition, the separation of church and state—Arab societies lack such essential democratic concepts and instead vest authority in the word of Mohammed, his interpreters the imams, and the tribal leaders.

The essence of Arab societies is tribal identity, kinship networks, and conceptions of collective honor. These are what organize and regulate the relations of everyday life. In such a context democratic principles are meaningless and incomprehensible. How could a modern democratic bureaucracy function, for example, if officials remain loyal primarily to tribe or family? There can be no such thing as disinterested public service. Public office becomes a means of benefiting your family and harming your enemies, not applying rules fairly.

Modern working democracies developed in different ways. And although they all share the political values mentioned above, their respective governments can be quite varied—the United States, Switzerland, Singapore, the United Kingdom—all democracies and all somewhat different.

One thing that they all share though is a basic requirement of all functioning democracies: a class of people who have a strong devotion to and understanding of its principles—a professional bureaucracy. The more experienced and traditional the more robust and stable is the government. Iraq has no professional, public-spirited,bureaucratic class, nor has any other Arab nation. What substitutes for one in Iraq is the members of Saddam’s extended family and his cronies from Tikrit. In Saudi Arabia, of course, it is the 7000 Saudi Princes.

And experience with nearly a hundred newly independent countries all of which “intended” to become democratic suggests that only a tiny handful, those largely influenced by Western values—Chile, Poland, Hungary, Taiwan—show any real gains in this direction. The rest, from the Congo to Uzbekistan, suffer from endemic corruption, illegitimate elections and a wide array of political ills that derive from the absence of a modern professional bureaucratic class that values the basic democratic ideas that come only from being trained and educated in Western democracies.

WHAT ABOUT JAPAN?

One of the major arguments in the repertoire of those who propose democracy for Iraq is that we were able to transform Japan after the Second World War in less than a generation. There, they say, we entered a country as non-western and un-democratic as Iraq and eventually wrangled the Japanese people around to democracy.

What is overlooked by the proponents of democracy for Iraq is that Japan was a culturally homogeneous nation, unlike the contentious cultural jungle of Iraq, and that the Japanese people were, at least at that time, obeisant to the wishes of their Emperor, and that when he concurred with the Military Governor, MacArthur, in the new political changes his subjects went along uncritically.
But most important, according to Stanley Kurtz, in the Winter 2003 issue of City Journal, “In embracing democracy under American occupation, the Japanese drew on a long, if imperfect, democratic tradition.” Soon after Admiral Perry opened Japan to the outside world in 1853, Japan’s leaders started on a series of democratic reforms which resulted in an authentic constitutional system by 1889. Kurtz points out that these democratic reforms were encouraged by “…the ‘liberty and popular rights’ movement—a remarkable efflorescence of the liberal spirit that deeply and enduringly changed Japanese society. As early as the 1870s, this intellectual movement had disseminated such Western thinkers as Mill and Rousseau to the farthest corners of Japan, where their influence inspired the Japanese to demand democracy.”

Through these influences authentic national political parties developed, and “Western political concepts like that of a ‘loyal opposition’ became part of the nation’s political culture.” It is clear that the model of 1945 Japan is largely irrelevant as an argument in favor of the democratic transformation of 2003 Iraq.

If not democracy then what? What should we do with Iraq when the US takes over?

COMING SOON: THE HORSEFEATHERS PLAN FOR POST WAR IRAQ

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April 02, 2003