January 16, 2004, 1:03 p.m.
Our Moment of Vainglory
A p.c. mess.
We are now making the Afghans and the Iraqis
pay a terrible price for American political correctness, and the price is
being exacted by our diplomats and misnamed "strategists." The fundamental
error — enshrined, as the splendid Diane Ravitch has recently
explained in her stellar work on American history textbooks — is the
belief that American political and civic culture is just one among many,
no better and quite likely considerably worse, than most. Hence we have no
right to tell anyone, here or elsewhere, how they should
behave.
This leads inevitably to one of Jerry Bremer's favorite
dicta, which is that the United States policy in Iraq must be
"even-handed." We will not support one party, or group, or faction,
against the others. We're not going to take sides. We will manage things
in such a way that all Iraqis will have a fair shot at political
participation, and then we will let the Iraqis decide what they
want.
That doctrine is lethal to freedom in the Middle East, where
none of the many active tyrants in the region has the slightest interest
in even-handedness. The tyrants want to survive, and if at all possible,
to win. They do not want free societies or polities in Iraq and
Afghanistan, because they fear the spread of freedom to their own
countries, which would spell their doom. So they are feverishly supporting
their own tyrannical kind under the benevolent noses of American
overseers. The Saudis, Iranians, Syrians, and others are pouring money,
mullahs, imams, killers, and political enforcers into the recently
liberated countries. They are spending millions of dollars to blanket Iraq
with anti-American, fanatical broadcasts from an amazing number of radio
and television stations (Iran alone is running more than ten of them), and
they are supporting those Iraqis who will push for Islamic tyrannies in
both countries.
Our misguided notion of even-handedness is in
effect a surrender to the forces of tyranny. We do nothing to support the
pro-democratic, basically secular groups and parties, we in fact have long
withheld funding (despite laws and appropriations to the contrary) from
the Iraqi National Congress — a pro-American, democratic, inclusive, and
even multicultural umbrella group — and we have recently acquiesced in
legislation in both Iraq and Afghanistan that gives Islamic law — sharia —
privileged standing, specifically in civil marriage and inheritance
procedures.
No wonder the Baghdad dentist who operates www.healingiraq.com writes
caustically "I'm so happy about this, now I can marry and divorce in any
way I like. Yay! I'm at the moment gathering family members to go to the
local cleric so I can divorce my fourth wife which I don't really like
anymore, and get myself an 11 year-old virgin. All the other small details
will be settled within the family and with the blessings of the
Sayid."
President Bush should tremble at the thought that
all our efforts to bring democracy to the Middle East will, instead,
replace one form of tyranny with another. He should have been outraged
when our ambassador plenipotentiary in Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, twice
accepted the definition of Afghanistan as an Islamic republic. He should
intervene to stop (Islamic) legal proceedings against two Afghan women now
charged with "blasphemy" for questioning the desirability of giving sharia
special status in the new national constitution. And he should insist that
Americans not fight, and even die, for the creation of yet more theocratic
states in the Middle East.
All this is the inevitable result of the
doctrines of political correctness, which make it socially unacceptable to
state the simple truth that the United States has developed a superior
political culture, one of the crucial elements of which is the separation
of church and state. When Alexis de Tocqueville recognized this act of
genius in the early 1830s, he marveled that it made both politics and
religion stronger and more responsive to the needs of their followers, and
he urged Europeans to adopt it. Scholar after scholar, including some of
the best of the Islamic world, have recognized that an excessive intrusion
of certain Islamic precepts into civil society has contributed mightily to
the lack of freedom, creativity and even scientific knowledge. The
liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan gave hope that the region's long
decline might be reversed. Yet our own leaders, on the ground and back in
Washington, are permitting one of the main elements in the ruin of the
region to reassume its dominant role.
Our diplomats are clearly not
as prepared to fight politically for democracy as our soldiers fought
militarily to remove the Taliban and Baathist tyrannies. Yet both are
integral parts of the same war, and should be waged with equal conviction
and equal intensity. The difference seems to be that our soldiers had no
doubt of the legitimacy of the American cause, while the diplomats and
strategists — in the Pentagon and the National Security Council as in
Foggy Bottom — are afraid to assert it and fight those who challenge it.
We've made a terrible mess. As "riverbend" — another Iraqi blogger —
puts it: "This is going to open new doors for repression in the most
advanced country on women's rights in the Arab world! Men are also against
this (although they certainly have the upper-hand in the situation)
because it's going to mean more confusion and conflict all around." But
our guys won't risk criticism for being politically incorrect, by fighting
for our values, and insisting that our wisdom be used to create a better
and freer Middle East.