By Douglas Bloomfield
First prize in the 2005 Egyptian presidential elections was a fifth term for Hosni Mubarak, with 88.6 percent of the votes. The runner up got five years in jail.
That’s democracy Egyptian-style, where the aging dictator is grooming his son to succeed him; and the Bush administration has been bluntly told to stop this democracy mishegoss and just keep sending money and arms so the top job can stay in the family.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice got the message and dropped any mention of reform from her public remarks during this month’s trip to Egypt and the Middle East. That pulled the plug on President Bush’s crusade to spread the gospel of democracy to the Arab world.
In a Cairo press conference, Rice didn’t repeat past talk of “democracy and reform,” and, according to the Washington Post, “the words never publicly crossed her lips.”
Instead she praised U.S.-Egypt ties as “an important strategic relationship.” Mubarak may be a corrupt, brutal and repressive dictator, but to the Bush administration he’s a valued partner and a leading moderate.
With the zeal of Crusaders seeking to spread Christianity to the Holy Land, Bush wanted to bring democracy to the Arab world in the worst way, and that’s how he went about the task. Planning for the crusade was on a par with planning for governing post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.
It’s not that the Arabs don’t need, and those outside the ruling classes don’t want, democracy. But the Arab world has this thing about crusaders telling them what to do — especially clumsy ones who think they know what’s best for everyone.
All that noble U.S. rhetoric proved to be just words; and when challenged by the despots who rule the Arab world, the administration folded.
Not elections alone
The administration won’t admit it has abandoned the crusade. It will point to Iraq as a great success, ignoring that its “democratic” government is inept, ineffective, corrupt, unstable and unlikely to survive any pullout of U.S. troops. The government is deeply split and led by a prime minister closer to Tehran and radical Islamists than to Washington and democratic principles.
The problem is another case of the administration putting the proverbial cart before the horse. Bush defined democracy as elections and prayed freedom would flow from that. And it backfired.
Israel and the Palestinians are paying a high price for the administration’s democratic fantasies.
Rice pressured Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to allow Hamas to participate in Palestinian parliamentary elections last year despite Hamas’ refusal to accept the basic tenets under which the Palestinian Authority was established: recognize Israel, renounce terror and abide by prior P.A. agreements.
The elections were to be a feather in the administration’s hat and would advance its goal of creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But, predictably, Hamas won, and it wants to establish the Palestinian state by eliminating Israel.
That’s the trouble with free elections. You can’t predict the outcome and you have to be willing to accept the verdict of the voters. But elections alone do not constitute democracy.
In autocracies like Egypt, Islamists and extremist groups can establish religious and health service infrastructures, generating popular followings, while the reformers and human rights groups try to operate openly in the political realm, making themselves targets of suppression or worse. When elections are held, the extremists are better prepared and likely to win.
Pro-democracy Arabs are highly critical of Bush’s crusade. They say the focus should be on gradually adopting reforms that will lay the foundation for building democracy, and that it cannot be imposed from outside.
Democracy is more than letting people vote. It means the rule of law, respect for human rights, freedom of speech and press, freely operating opposition parties, freedom to criticize and oppose the government, freedom from religious coercion, an independent judiciary.
In the absence of these institutions no informed electorate exists, and elections cannot be fully free and fair.
But in its rush to claim victory for its crusade, the administration gave little more than lip service to establishing a civil society in Arab lands.
The Israeli government is not enthusiastic about the Bush crusade. It fears elections today would bring radical Islamists and anti-Western extremists to power in place of pro-American despots like Mubarak; and that would lead to scrapping of peace treaties and other agreements with Israel.
Free elections in Egypt could turn power over to the Moslem Brotherhood or Egyptian Islamic Jihad. In Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden could win. Jordan, which is two-thirds Palestinian, could become a Palestinian state, possibly aligned with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah, with Iranian backing, is working to overthrow the only freely elected Arab government, but is trying to do it non-violently so it can claim it took power democratically.
Ironically, the only Arabs in the Middle East who enjoy democratic rights and freedom are citizens of Israel. Despite their treatment as second-class citizens, none is clamoring to make “aliyah” to the P.A. or any Arab country.
The refusal of the ruling autocrats to allow meaningful reform only enhances the power and influence of the Islamists, whose goal is to establish a rigid theocracy.
The Bush administration based its democracy crusade on faulty theories, wildly incorrect assumptions and blind faith.
Predictably, the results have only compounded U.S. problems in the Middle East, increased instability and added to the dangers Israel faces from the spreading epidemic of popular extremism.
Douglas M. Bloomfield is a Washington, D.C.-based syndicated columnist and a former chief lobbyist for AIPAC.
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