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http://www.merip.org/mero/interventions/blecher_interv.html Interventions: A Middle East Report Online Feature "Free People Will Set the Course of History" Robert Blecher (Robert Blecher teaches history at the University of Richmond.) March 2003 As the Bush administration struggled to find a justification for launching an attack on Iraq, churning out sketchy intelligence reports about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and links with al-Qaeda, Washington wordsmiths produced their own grist for the war mill: the prospect of a democratic pax americana in the Middle East. The importance of the pundits' contribution to the war machine should not be underestimated. As the task of swaying public opinion grew more difficult, rhetoric around freedom and democracy has become ever more central. In the weeks after September 11, 2001, George W. Bush did not talk of remaking the Middle East. But in successive State of the Union addresses, commencement speeches, press conferences and televised appeals to the nation, Bush showed increasing faith in the ability of the US to extirpate tyranny and implant freedom in this agonized region. Presidents did not always profess belief in the region's democratic potential, nor did the intellectuals who served them. At the time of the 1991 Gulf war, shapers of public opinion such as Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes toed the first Bush administration's line that Washington should not aim to democratize the Middle East. But by the leadup to the junior Bush's war on Iraq, the same thinkers and pundits had reoriented their policy prescriptions, in many cases directly contradicting their writings of a decade ago. Employing their prodigious skills to trumpet the golden age of democracy, they have set aside their former convictions to serve power. The push for American Empire has arisen from the convergence of diverse ideological streams. Reaganite neo-conservatives such as William Kristol and Robert Kagan leveraged the language of national security to ally themselves with unreconstructed Cold Warriors like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Yet given the lukewarm popular support for the war in Iraq, the march to war could not have succeeded without the assistance of Establishment academics and journalists such as Fouad Ajami and Thomas Friedman, whose mainstream credentials legitimized the administration's agenda among those who otherwise might have been opposed. Rooted in the language of national security and democracy, American Empire has been enabled by a convergence -- not the congruence -- of political agendas. Neo-conservatives, traditional conservatives and plain old-fashioned liberals have formed a coalition of Iraq hawks whose spilling of ink has been but a pale precursor to the spilling of Iraqi blood. Those Elusive Jeffersonians The first Gulf war was fought with little optimism and no sense of historical mission. Democracy:
Disarming his audience with jocular racism, Powell expressed his government's pessimism about bringing democracy to the Middle East. Eleven years later, on the eve of a new Gulf war, Powell would say that a US victory "could fundamentally reshape the Middle East in a powerful, positive way,"[1] but in the early 1990s, the US administration believed that democracy could be achieved only through mass popular action. President Bush called on Iraqis to "take matters into their own hands," encouraging them to do what peoples across Eastern Europe had done to topple their own undemocratic regimes. Prior: ; Nazir: "I saw the president the other day on Friday (June 7, [1991]) and he walked up to me in the White House and said: 'Listen, Mr. Ambassador, we didn't fight this war for democracy or those [war] trials. Don't be intimidated by what's going on."[2] Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Mack found himself turning verbal somersaults to avoid calling for democracy, instead calling upon Kuwait's rulers to "maximize internal political participation in accordance with all traditional institutions."[3] James Schlesinger, a former defense secretary, forthrightly summed up the US position on democracy in the Middle East: "Do we seriously want to change the institutions of Saudi Arabia? The brief answer is no; over the years we have sought to preserve these institutions, sometimes in preference to more democratic forces coursing throughout the region. King Fahd [of Saudi Arabia] has stated quite unequivocally that democratic institutions are not appropriate for this society. What is interesting is that we do not seem to disagree."[4] Same Pipes, Different Tune Today's Iraq hawks agreed fully with the administration's position. Soon after the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, they warned that democracy was unlikely to come to the Middle East. Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum and founder of Campus Watch, a website dedicated to policing academics who study the Middle East, pushed the line that Hussein's successor would be someone in the military. Succession would be based on power, not principles, leading Pipes to echo Bush's position that a "stable, defensible and non-bellicose" Iraq was the best conceivable outcome.[5] Democracy did not figure in the equation. If the Iraqi regime was to be overthrown, it would be through a popular uprising, not foreign intervention: "It is now up to the Iraqis themselves to dispose of Saddam Hussein and his evil clique." Such a result was likely, Pipes thought. On the first anniversary of the Gulf war, Pipes incorrectly predicted, "Desert Storm is likely to lead to Saddam's eventual overthrow."[6] Like Colin Powell, Pipes in late 1991 preferred to see Saddam Hussein remain in power:
The only way to avoid these consequences of toppling Hussein, according to Pipes, was "a very intrusive and protracted US military presence in Iraq." He counseled against such a course:
Given this persuasive case against occupying Iraq, one could easily mistake Pipes for an anti-war activist. It was not, however, a sense of solidarity with the Iraqi people that motivated these sentiments, as the following calumny reveals:
The Daniel Pipes of 1992 is characterized by an unmitigated pessimism about the prospects for Middle East democracy. Even Germany and Japan, which later would become examples of successful US nation-building, are inappropriate models for "stagnant" Arab societies mired in the past. For all its strength, US power was seen as limited, to be used sparingly, in a region that had been bypassed by the New World Order:
A decade after the 1991 Gulf war, Pipes has radically changed his tune. Abandoning his previous concerns about the complications that would arise from a US occupation of Iraq, he urged George W. Bush to move on Baghdad: "the risks are overrated."[9] In 2002, on MSNBC's "Buchanan and Press," he directly contradicted his earlier comments about the potential for Arab democracy: "It's in our interests that they modernize and it's in our interests to help them modernize and I think we know how. We are very modern and we can help them. Look, we've done that elsewhere. Look, for example, at Japan. We defeated the Japanese and then we guided them towards a democracy. We did the same with Germany. We should be doing the same thing with Iraq." Japan and Germany suddenly have become viable models for the region to emulate. The US occupation of Iraq might not be so bad, since the US now has the opportunity to "modernize" the Middle East, or in terms of what Pipes rejected in 1992, the region now seems to be "amenable to improvements along American lines." The US-led New World Order has finally made it to the Middle East: "The United States cannot pass up a unique chance to remake the world's most politically fevered region."[10] Pipes has become a supporter of American Empire. Same Hama, Different Rules Pipes is not the only figure to have reversed himself. Thomas Friedman, journalist and self-appointed itinerant ambassador, established his credentials as a Middle East expert with his first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem. Therein he coined the term "Hama rules" (referring to Hafiz al-Asad's bloody repression of Islamist revolts in the Syrian city of Hama) to describe the guiding principle of politics in the Middle East: rule or die. This truculent logic informed his take on the Gulf war of 1990-91, which he saw as a mechanism to restore the status quo: "This war was not about healing.… This war was never about competing visions for the future of the Arab world. It was about a thief who had to be stopped."[11] By 2003, he had decided the US was powerful enough to break the hold of Hama rules and create real change in the Middle East: "[O]ur kids will have a better chance of growing up in a safer world if we help put Iraq on a more progressive path and stimulate some real change in an Arab world that is badly in need of reform."[12] Or take Richard Haass, director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff. In 1997, he described the notion that the US would be the world's only great power as "beyond our reach.… It simply is not doable." In terms of democracy, he stated forthrightly: "Primacy cannot be confused with hegemony. The United States cannot compel others to become more democratic."[13] By 2002, he had become a spokesman for what the US could do instead of what it could not do to spread democracy: "By failing to help foster gradual paths to democratization in many of our important relationships -- by creating what might be called a 'democratic exception' -- we missed an opportunity to help these countries became more stable, more prosperous, more peaceful and more adaptable to the stresses of a globalizing world. It is not in our interest -- or that of the people living in the Muslim world -- for the United States to continue this exception. US policy will be more actively engaged in supporting democratic trends in the Muslim world than ever before."[14] Intellectuals who made their reputation within the academy have been no more consistent. Take, for instance, Fouad Ajami. In 1990, Ajami railed against the prospect of the US bringing democracy to the Middle East: "The US is in the Gulf to defend order.... We're not there to impose our rules. The injection of questions of democracy into the debate is completely inappropriate."[15] Yet 13 years later, he advocates precisely such an injection. In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Ajami rejects the restraint with which the US conducted itself in 1991, arguing that the "dread of 'nation-building' must be cast aside." Ajami throws in his lot with those who "envisage a more profound American role in Arab political life: the spearheading of a reformist project that seeks to modernize and transform the Arab landscape. Iraq would be the starting point, and beyond lies an Arab political and economic tradition and culture whose agonies and failures have been on cruel display." As with Pipes, the rehabilitation of Japan gives Ajami hope that an "opening for democracy" is emerging in the Middle East: "The theatrics and megalomania of Douglas MacArthur may belong to a bygone age, but Iraq could do worse than having the interim stewardship of a modern-day high commissioner who would help usher it toward a normal world." While the advertising consultants try to steer the US administration away from the language of empire, intellectuals are not constrained by marketing strategies. Ajami's rhetoric confirms that the Mandate -- the internationally sanctioned occupation of the inter-war period that aimed to "raise up subject peoples" -- is the imperial form of choice for Iraq.[16] "Bernard Has Taught Us How" Bernard Lewis rejects Ajami's open invocation of empire, yet his writings mesh with the American imperial agenda. Overall, Lewis has evinced a remarkable continuity over his half-century career, yet on the narrow issue of what the US can do to remake the Middle East, he too seems to have shifted his position over the past decade. In 1990, laying the roots for Samuel Huntington's later work, Lewis wrote the world faced a "clash of civilizations" that pitted "Judeo-Christian" against "Muslim" culture. Islam was not monolithic, Lewis was quick to point out, as "fundamentalism" was only one of many Islamic traditions: "There are others, more tolerant, more open, that helped to inspire the great achievements of Islamic civilization in the past, and we may hope that these other traditions will in time prevail." It is specifically violent Islam that has shaped Lewis' recent cultural theorizing and authorizes his prescriptions for US policy, yet he was more catholic in presenting the dilemmas that confronted the region in the wake of the 1991 Gulf war: "[T]here will be a hard struggle, in which we of the West can do little or nothing. Even the attempt might do harm, for these are issues that Muslims must decide among themselves."[17] Decide among themselves. This rhetoric of choice has been a consistent feature of Lewis's thought for more than 50 years, dating to his first monograph, The Arabs in History. In 1950, Lewis wrote that Arabs, faced with "problems of readjustment," had three choices: taking on some version of "modern civilization," rejecting "the West and all its works, pursuing the mirage of a return to the lost theocratic ideal" or "renewing their society from within, meeting the West on terms of equal cooperation." Over the next four decades, the Arabs did not live up the hope Lewis had placed in them, but the Gulf war seemed to widen the space for the Arabs to make the right choice. In the rebellion of the Kurds and the Shi'a, he saw the possibility of a new age:
Even as Saddam Hussein slaughtered the Kurds and Shi'a, Lewis retained his
conviction that only the peoples of the region could remake their future: "For
the first time in more than two centuries, this choice is entirely their own....
Those who care about the Middle East and its peoples can only hope that they
will choose well and soon."[19] P:
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name=_ftnref32>[32] the Yet even once the democratic "choice" is made, US interests will not be assured, since new democratic polities could disregard US cues. French and German democracy has not been a great boon to the current administration. Iraq's non-democratic neighbors are providing the greatest assistance to the US, whereas relatively democratic Turkey has caused consternation among Washington planners. Even beyond the war, continued US support for Israel, demands for basing rights and efforts to extract greater oil profits could inflame public opinion, which in turn would produce restraints on governmental cooperation. At the very least, a government accountable to its people would demand concessions from the US in exchange for cooperation, which is perhaps why Douglas Feith recommended to an AEI conference in 1998 that the US push a notion of democracy built around limited government and personal freedoms, not majority rule.[34] Bernard Lewis is similarly apprehensive about democracy running amok. While he rails against the "deep-seated, insidious prejudice...[that] Arabs are incapable of democratic institutions," he nevertheless cautions that "we should be realistic in our expectations. Democracy is strong medicine, which has to be administered in small gradually increasing doses otherwise you risk killing the patient"; Hitler, after all, came to power "in a free and fair election."[35] Lewis worries that that democracy will give Arabs the chance to choose wrongly, disappointing him once again, as they have done repeatedly over his career. For Feith and Lewis, democracy needs to be scaled back, lest the US actually get the robust democracy that the Bush administration claims to want. Conservative intellectuals in the US, for their part, have not hesitated to make the right choice, allying themselves with US Empire. They have recently attacked the field of Middle East Studies for failing to pay homage to the "essentially beneficent role in the world" that the US plays.[36] In dubbing the entire field a "failure," servants of empire such as Martin Kramer have implied that scholarship on the Middle East is of value only inasmuch as it supports US policy. By this standard, the Iraq hawks have succeeded mightily. Accommodating themselves to the political fashion of the day, they have prioritized political expediency over intellectual rigor and consistency. Middle East academics have been accused of "groupthink" and illegitimately politicizing their scholarship, but ironically, it is the Iraq hawks whose work is politicized in the most literal sense, reflecting policy groupthink and the Washington consensus. Are Japan and Germany suitable models for reconstructing Iraq? Is the "injection of the question of democracy" in the Middle East appropriate? Is the region "amenable to improvements along American lines"? Can the US military create the conditions for democracy? The Iraq hawks now answer these questions in the affirmative even though very little has changed in the region to give hope to the partisans of democracy. Much has changed elsewhere, of course. The murder of over 3,000 civilians on September 11 gave renewed impetus to American hegemony and stripped away the public's hesitation to project force around the globe. It is this change that accounts for the consensus that includes establishment commentators and neo-conservative rabble-rousers. As they would have it, the potential for democratization has arisen from the fortuitous coincidence of Saddam Hussein's obstinacy and American beneficence. Leaving aside the question of US intentions, this formulation omits a third aspect of the current historical conjuncture: the newfound American willingness to occupy nations and remake them in its image. The US has used force on previous occasions to overthrow governments. What distinguishes the current moment -- and the Iraq hawks' about-face since the 1991 Gulf war -- is the apparent zeal to inculcate a new set of political and cultural sensitivities among an entire people. This imperial enthusiasm is specious, however, in that talk of democracy is little more than a mechanism for creating compliant states that will "choose" to further US interests. As the US military has wielded its weapons in the service of American Empire, so too have its intellectual boosters. Footnotes [1] Quoted in Daniel Pipes, "America: Be Ambitious After Iraq," Jerusalem Post, February 12, 2003. [2] United Press International, July 5, 1991. [3] Louise Lief, "Kuwait's Fight for Democracy," US News & it: "#_ftn31" name=_ftnref31>[31] Today, however, the US can create the conditions under which Iraqi and Middle Eastern peoples might make, at long last, the correct choice. US tutelage will arrest their centuries-long period of decline and restore the grandeur of antiquity. For the Lewis of 2003, unlike the Lewis of 1990, the West has an active role to play in this process. The agnostic has become a believer. World: ftn4> [4] Quoted in Alain Gresh, "The Legacy of Desert Storm: A European Perspective," Journal of Palestine Studies 26/4 (Summer 1997). Gresh offers a similar laundry list of setbacks for democracy in the Middle East. [5] Pipes, "Why Arabs Aren't Rioting," Wall Street Journal (Europe), January 23, 1991. [6] Pipes, "One Year Later: Was Operation Desert Storm Worth It?" Philadelphia Inquirer, January 16, 1992. [7] Pipes, "Let the Iraqis Get Rid of Saddam," Washington Post, December 22, 1991. [8] Pipes, "After Desert Storm, No Real Change in the Middle East," Jewish Exponent, January 17, 1992. [9] Pipes and Jonathan Schanzer, "On to Baghdad? Yes -- The Risks Are Overrated," New York Post, December 3, 2001. [10] Pipes, Jerusalem Post, op cit. [11] Thomas Friedman, "What the United States Has Taken On In the Gulf, Besides a War," New York Times, January 20, 1991. [12] Friedman, "Thinking About Iraq (II)," New York Times, January 26, 2003. [13] Nicholas Lemann, "The Next World Order," The New Yorker, April 4, 2001. [14] From "Towards Greater Democracy in the Muslim World," speech by Richard Haass to the Council on Foreign Relations, December 4, 2002. Available online at: http://www.newamericancentury.org/middleeast-120602.htm [15] Robert S. Greenberger, "Calls for Democracy in the Middle East Are Creating a Dilemma for White House," Wall Street Journal, October 8, 1990. [16] Keith Watenpaugh, "The Guiding Principles and the US 'Mandate' for Iraq: Twentieth-Century Colonialism and America's New Empire," Logos 2/1 (Winter 2003). [17] Bernard Lewis, "The Roots of Muslim Rage," Atlantic Monthly, September 1990. [18] Lewis, "Mideast States: Pawns No Longer in Imperial Games," Wall Street Journal, April 11, 1991. [19] Lewis, "Rethinking the Middle East," Foreign Affairs 71/4 (Fall 1992). [20] Lewis, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 159-160. [21] Lewis, "Who Will Win, Who Will Lose in the Gulf," Wall Street Journal (Europe), February 21, 1991. [22] Speech given by Bush to the American Enterprise Institute on February 26, 2003, as reported by New York Times, February 27, 2003. [23] Lewis, "Islam and Liberal Democracy: A Historical Overview," Journal of Democracy 7/2 (1996). [24] Quoted in Lamis Andoni, "Bernard Lewis: In The Service of Empire," Electronic Intifada, December 16, 2002. Accessed at http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article976.shtml [25] Ibid. [26] Carla Anne Robbins and Jeanne Cummings, "How Bush Decided That Hussein Must be Ousted from Atop Iraq," Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2002; Robert: ftn27> [27] Anthony Lewis, "Bush and Iraq," New York Review of Books, November 7, 2002. [29] Paul Singer, "Domino Democracy," Jerusalem Post, April 7, 2002. [30] Lewis, "Islam and Liberal Democracy: A Historical Overview," Journal of Democracy 7/2 (1996). [31] Forward, October 11, 2002. [32] Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2003. [33] Haaretz, February 18, 2003. [34] Proceedings of the AEI conference of 10/14/98 quoted at: http://www.againstbombing.org/aei.htm [35] Meyrav Wurmser, "An Emerging Palestinian Alternative: Can Peace Be Achieved Through Democracy?" Hudson Institute, June 6, 2002. Accessed: http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details& id: 1712 [36] Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (Washington: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001), p. 129. 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