Friday, September 15, 2006
Hey, they couldn't get any satisfaction getting "democracy" going in Egypt, so taking it out on their neighbor must be the next best thing: Egyptian Activists Turn Against Israel
The campaign by the Kifaya group is a sign of how the war in Lebanon knocked momentum from democracy efforts and left many reform activists deeply resentful of the United States.
Over the past two years, Washington has made promoting democracy a key part of its Middle East policy. But now reformists accuse Washington of supporting Israel in its offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas, which wreaked widespread destruction in Lebanon.
Edward S. Walker, a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Israel, believes Kifaya's new campaign showcases Washington's dilemma as it strives to sell the values of democracy and freedom in a region galvanized for decades by the Arab-Israeli conflict.
"One of the costs of pressing for democracy in the Middle East is the fact that most democratically based Arab parties ... will be hostile to Israel," said Walker, now with the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
The Kifaya movement has launched a campaign to collect 1 million signatures on a petition calling for the annulment of Egypt's U.S.-sponsored 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
The move is mainly symbolic, but it highlights the extent of resentment felt by Egyptians toward Israel _ and by association, the United States, its main backer...
The dilemma is that the region isn't even close to being ready for peace or democracy. No colonial power is forcing these people to circulate this petition, nor compelling people to apply their signatures. They are their own agents, making their own "shoot-own-foot" choices.
That seems to be the dilemma in much of the Arab world. In Algeria in the early 1990s, free elections resulted in a victory for a fundamentalist Islamic party. France earned a lot of resentment (and some terrorist attacks in Paris) by intervening to keep the secular government in place. Not legal, but that's the dilemma you face when a non-democratic party wins a democratic election.
It's a question of the cliche "one man, one vote...one time."
In Iraq democracy has shown the irreconciliable splits in society, among Shi'a, Sunni, Turkmen and Kurds. In Palestine, they elected Hamas. Maybe it was because of the PLO's corruption, but certainly Hamas' fundamentalist Islamic program was no deterrent.
A democratic system simply means that the party with the majority of the public's support wins. That doesn't mean that the majorities in countries with non-democratic traditions will be "democratic" in their attitudes. And it certainly doesn't mean that they'll be pro-Western. So this movement in Egypt should come as no surprise.
There's a lot of interest here. Of course democracy isn't just voting, it's having a free society, which Egypt doesn't have. They're obviously frustrated with their lack of ability to do anything with Mubarak, so, as per Sharansky's theory, the pressure release is outward. Only unlike what Sharansky usually says -- that bad leadership uses Israel and the Jews to deflect attention outward -- this idiocy is entirely grass-roots.
Of course, democracy in the modern understanding is not the same as dictatorship of the majority.
But it seems that the most anti-democratic forces have figured out how to use "democratic movements" and democratic mechanisms as a tool to gain power. I do not know if Hitler was the first in this respect, but he certainly is not the last.
Another possible explanation is that Kifaya may simply be trying to be "populist".
You're right, Solomon, democracy isn't just about the mechanics of holding elections and having parliaments. These practices have to be outgrowths of political cultures deeply rooted in democratic values. Otherwise, a quick-fix contrived "democratic" system will just be window dressing. Or it will turn into a parody. That's why I worry about Iraq and Afghanistan. And that's why I wonder what Chris Patten was trying to accomplish by introducing democratic reforms in Hong Kong only a couple of years before 1997.
And, Gene, yes I agree with you, too. Savvy fundamentalist groups will figure out how to work within the system.
Pakistan is another really interesting--and potentially tragic--situation to me. Musharraf was brought up in England and wishes westernization for Pakistan. His rival, Benazir Bhutto, a political science major from Harvard Radcliffe--I'm not kidding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benazir_Bhutto--is the moral equivalent of MIT's Noam Chomsky. Musharraf stepped aside at one point, and her party sort of stepped up govern, and the ensuing killing chaos nearly engulfed Pakistan. So he took over again and is a true military dictator. (Sort of like Saddam Hussein but not at all like him.) Just as Musharraf stepped back in to calm the country down, 9/ll happened. I think there is something to be said for installing dictator/military-style transition governments to protect an emerging democracy, which is the new sophisticated ahead-of-his-time thinking of our current president. Is he right about how to do this, convert a county to a democracy? Yes. It will work, but it needs some extra hand-holding for a while. Iraq would work too if the PLO remnants and the al Queda remnants and Hezbollah and Baathists--not to mention the BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera--would stop torturing the Iraqi people. Every time they try to stand up, these evil groups knock them down. The only way to stop this may be to put an electric fence around the entire country. Short of that, the trench they are digging around Baghdad this week might help.
My feet haven't touched the ground this week since I read that letter Michael Totten linked to on his Web site from the editor-leader of Hamas, Ghazi Hamad, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1154525954624, crying out to the Palestinean people to calm down and get to work and build a country. So President Bush is right. If Arafat's Palestine can function as a democracy, then it's possible anywhere. It's coming;just very slowly. It can happen, just not as quickly as we would like it to, but that doesn't mean it won't work. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. What our military is doing and what Bush is doing in trying to support the establishment of an accountable self-sufficient palestinean state I believe will work, and it will work sooner than we can even imagine. Years ago I read a great story in the Atlantic Monthly about the "gilded age" in China in the late 1990s that came about when the communists decided to take their oppressive hand off the Chinese business community. Within a year there was new tremendous wealth being generated. The speed with which freedom can work to help people is stunning. It would be go better if Europe and the UN would understand and support this project. I feel sorry for President Bush because he can see it, but the people around him can't. Or they don't want to because if they admitted it could work, they'd have to help. And that's really what's going on here. People are lazy and rationalizing their self-indulgent behavior instead of rolling up their sleeves, like Solomonia is doing, to help these people. Sorry to go on so long.
I guess that, when I said a democratic system is defined by the existence of elections, I didn't mean that to sound so simplistic. I understand that free elections--plus an independent judiciary, empowered legislature, and free press--make for the structure of a democratic system, but not for a democratic society. The latter is also defined by social attitudes, political culture and philosophies, economic and social justice, and so on.
My point was that elections alone--without democratic values-- don't create anything but the illusion of a democracy, and a fleeting one at that.