A Tale of Two Democracies

From the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page

Indifferent to Democracy
Why the Arab world roots for American failure in Iraq.
BY MICHAEL YOUNG Friday, August 19, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

As the U.S. stumbles in Iraq, many in the Arab world (but also in the American academic left and isolationist right) have solemnly, at times pleasurably, described the situation as fitting retribution for "neocolonialism." The debate on America's imperial calling, particularly in the Middle East, is surely absorbing; yet from an Arab perspective, particularly that of the region's liberals, far more essential than how a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq might smash the Bush administration's hubris is the misfortune it will visit on Arabs striving for change.

Even assuming that carelessness long ago derailed American democratization ambitions in Iraq, failure will, at the very least, push democracy to a far lower rung of regional priorities. This will be a boon to the security-minded Arab regimes that most feared a regional democratic transformation in the first place. And those of the Iraq war's critics who, legitimately, bemoaned Washington's coddling of Arab dictators (but then refused to endorse the exception to the rule in Iraq) may one day see this or a subsequent administration again prefer the steadiness of tyrants to the wishy-washiness of Arab societies that seem to hate the U.S. far more dependably than they do their own lack of liberty.

Conceptually and politically, the Iraqi situation has shown the Arab world and its intellectuals at their stalemated worse. As an idea, the "neocolonial" paradigm is intriguing, because, rhetorically, it goes back decades to when Arab nationalism was at its peak. In holding to a storyline that the Iraqi conflict reflects an Arab desire for release from American hegemony, Arab critics are resurrecting an intellectual phantom. As Iraqis have fallen back on sect, tribe or ethnic loyalties, they have further demolished the myth of an all-encompassing Arab identity that, everywhere in the region, must dissolve primary identities. What the critics won't admit is that Iraq is yet another graveyard of Arab nationalism, not its avatar.


Glenn Reynolds of instapundit.com is fond of saying that democracy is a process, not an event, and historically a long-term process at that. But considering the differences between the road to democracy by Palestinian Arabs as opposed to the Iraqis--the ongoing corruption that did not die with Arafat, the 'justice' arbitrarily being meted out by members of Fatah, the censorship and intimidation (and recently: kidnapping) of journalists--what is going on now in Abbas' democracy is a sham that indeed is a return to the policy of dealing with a 'strongman' (an odd choice of words when referring to Abbas). And it is all the more ludicrous when the 'strongman' fools no one--except for the West that seems more tolerant and more willing to see the success of democracy in the PA than in Iraq, a West that is cynical of including Baathists in the new government in Iraq, but does not blink at the inclusion of terrorists and gunmen under Abbas.

Again, perhaps the biggest difference in the two experiments is that for the US, their experiment is halfway across the world; for Israel it is in their backyard. And Iraq is just down the block.