Democratization

While ostensibly focused on British policy, London's Independent recently ran an editorial which could as easily be addressed to Bush's parallel policies - "You can't just promote democracy in one Muslim country, Mr Blair". The author, who set aside his skepticism of the stated reasons for the war and who supported the invasion of Iraq in order to depose Hussein's tyranny, writes:

This is the war that we leftish hawks always wanted Britain to fight: not to eradicate mythical weapons but for democracy at the heart of the Arab world. It is the antithesis of the "clash of civilisation" thesis popular on the US and Israeli right. We define this not as a fight between a democratic Western civilisation and a totalitarian Islamic civilisation. No; it is a clash within the Muslim world, between those who seek democracy - the Iraqi people, supported by Britain and the United States - and those who oppose it - Saddam, his Baathists and assorted jihadist groups. Britain, Mr Blair argues, is not against Arab people. We are on their side against the dictators who suppress them.

And yet... Mr Blair, after this compelling call for Arab democracy, made an astonishing passing reference to "our Saudi friends". The use of this phrase reveals that we still have some way to go in persuading the Prime Minister that his democratic idealism - used to life-saving effect in Kosovo and Sierra Leone - cannot be selective.

He later observes,

Saudi Arabia is a textbook example [of Britain's active backing of tyrants]. It is run in a way that is antithetical to American values. It is an absolutist feudal monarchy - a form of government that America itself was founded to overthrow - which savagely denies its people any freedom of speech or thought. If a US president behaved for just an hour in the way the Saudi princes act every day, he would be impeached and jailed. But because there is an American interest involved - getting oil from the vast Saudi reserves - US presidents have cast aside American values. American money has been poured into a form of government that could not be less American, in order to keep oil on tap. This is a desecration of the American revolution.

When one looks at the butchery we presently support or ignore to facilitate the "war on terror", it raises the question of whether a decade or two from now our allies will once again be our mortal enemies. Saddam Hussein, backed by President Reagan, is now #2 on our "most wanted" list. Osama Bin Laden, reportedly recruited by the CIA in 1979 under President Carter, and at a minimum indirectly armed and supported by President Reagan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, is now #1 on that same list. Certainly, those were marriages of convenience - just as is our present support for the Saudi royal family or the barbaric leadership of Uzbekistan.

Comments