Optimism
By Callimachus | Related entries in General Politics, History, In The News, The WorldWaPo’s Richard Cohen, writing off the American effort in Iraq as a defeat, revives the “Arabs are violent, incorrigibly tribal and incapable of democracy” motif:
We understood so little about Iraq. We thought it was just another place where people wanted to be free and vote for the school board. Even today U.S. officials cling to their ethnocentric aspirations.
…
The Islamic world � the Arab world in particular � is fighting its own way, rejecting an alien culture the way the body rejects a foreign cell.
Get it? Democracy is ethnocentric. Only some races can tolerate it. Not the least consequence of a constitutional failure in Iraq would be the resurgence of such talk in the West. A failure in Iraq — whoever you blame for it — would collapse one bridge built across the “clash of cultures” divide. It would stifle one argument for reaching out to moderate and secular forces in the Islamic/Arab world as the antidote to Islamists. It would disgust that many more American voters with the notion that creative adventures work better than pulling in the fences, sealing the borders, and keeping the old trigger finger limber. You don’t get a second chance to do this right.
By “failure” I mean a breakdown of the entire national system. Not a constitution that talks about religion, or one that allows local autonomies. “Failure” doesn’t mean an Iraq that is capable of having a diplomatic dispute with the United States. We didn’t buy the place to keep as a household pet. Within a generation of the French helping the United States get free, America and France locked horns in a cold war.
“You cannot believe in democracy without being an optimist. Democracy is identical with the idea that people can live in freedom without abusing it.�
Iraq has reached its “Germany moment.� After tyranny, then war, then occupation, the country is about to stand � or fall � on its own, as West Germany did in 1948. It’s easy to forget how much nail-biting accompanied those first baby steps
Monday, Iraq’s National Assembly gave itself another week to finish drafting a new constitution. In some quarters this news has been greeted as a death knell for democracy in Baghdad.
The drafting committee has spent more than four months preparing what is intended to be the foundation of a new, democratic Iraq.
But that’s about how long it took the delegates in Philadelphia in 1787 to hammer out their document � America, too, once had to learn to walk. And America didn’t face an active insurgency and enemy nations circling like sharks. Even then only 39 of the 55 Philadelphia convention delegates thought the thing was worth signing, and it took another four years to get the Bill of Rights.
Make no mistake; the Iraqis are walking a tightrope. Saddam’s brutality kept the nation’s ethnic and religious groups in check. If the new constitution doesn’t give them all a sense of participation, Iraq could become Bosnia on steroids.
The challenges are enormous, but solutions may be found. They must be found.
“You cannot believe in democracy without being an optimist.” Not Madison or Wilson or Roosevelt said that; the author was Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the son of an Austro-Hungarian count and a Japanese woman.
He wrote it in an article published at the end of 1945 in a newspaper printed by German-Americans on the very presses of Goebbels’ old Völlkischer Beobachter, amid the ruins of Munich, where smoke still reeked from caved-in basements and rats waddled in the streets, gorged on God knows what.
He titled it “Der Optimismus Amerikas,� “The Optimism of America.�
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2005 and is filed under General Politics, History, In The News, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 17th, 2005 at 10:29 pm
Yeah, I disagree that democracy is ethnocentric, but I do understand why many in the Arab world may choose to reject it. Without a clear separation of church and state, politics get extremely authoritarian and that can’t help but bleed into your culture and your psyche. All I can say is that I’m eternally greatful that our forefathers had the “foresight” to separate the church and the state, otherwise I think America would be a very different place.
In any event, another great piece. Well done.
August 18th, 2005 at 7:53 am
Democracy is not ethnocentric but it does require something that is not present in Iraq, a national identity. Most world Democracies were formed based upon a unifying national identity and a tie to the land. Iraq today does not exist.
Historically Iraq was a created entity by the British in an attempt to control the oil in the region. In recent years the only thing holding Iraq together was, for the worst, Saddam Hussein. Now you have three separate entities with differing intentions and goals trying to form a nation? What is in it for the Kurds? Without Iraq they have a nation, a big pot of oil, and an opportunity to create the homeland they always wanted by eventually biting off parts of Turkey and Iran they traditionally claim. What is the upside of them joining in a democratic Iraq? The question is the same for the Shiites in that they have oil, a chance for a theocratic homeland, and the ability to get support and protection from their theological partners, Iran. The only ones that would benefit, since they have no oil, are the Sunni and they don’t want democracy unless they are in charge.
I fear that the grand experiment will fail and we will be faced with a Kurdish nation that likes us, a Shiite nation that (with Iran) will try to restrict our access to oil, and a bubbling pot of resentment and terrorism in the Sunnis. Not surprisingly, Bush will be claiming victory. I hope I am wrong and Democracy works but I just don’t see it.
August 18th, 2005 at 10:12 am
Islam is not an ethnicity, and democracy is not ethnocentric; however, I think Mr. Cohen makes a valid point because Islam in its traditionalist interpretation is a religion and a government. Mohammad was a conquistador, more like Ghengis Kahn or Alexander the great than Christ or Buddha.
We are used to the concept of religion as seperate from civil government here in the west because it is compatible with traditional christianity, and was institutionalised after the Magna carta in the 12th century. Traditional Islam makes no no such distinction. Laws encompassing all aspects of life, from taxes to inheritance, to acceptable forms of dress are an integral part of the “covenant” with God established by Mohammad and his early followers.
Muslims, if they want to live in a truly democratic society that values individual liberty, equality for women, religious pluralism, and secular civil law, have no choice but to reject the very words of Mohammad. That may be to much to expect from the greater muslim word, let alone Iraq.
August 18th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
Noodles, that interpretation might hold true for Sunni Islam, but not so for Shi’ites, who reject the caliphate. That’s why it;s the Sunnis who are the main advocates of a strong presence for Islam in the Iraqi constitution that’s being written. The Shi’ites are no less pious (or fanatical, depending on your perspective) about their faith, but they don’t tend to mix it with secular government. That’s not obvious, because Iran is a notable exception, but Khomeni was not a mainstream ayatollah.
August 18th, 2005 at 4:53 pm
I’ll be happy if the Iraqis cobble together some Articles of Confederation with a ten-year expiration. Doesn’t have to work well, just has to keep things going while the country pulls itself together. Once they’ve got ten years’ experience with voting there’ll be a much better base to build a permanent constitution on.
August 19th, 2005 at 5:34 pm
“That’s why it;s the Sunnis who are the main advocates of a strong presence for Islam in the Iraqi constitution that’s being written.”
That analysis makes sense, but it’s really a self-defeating position for the Sunni to take, since it will be the Shi’ites who get to determine whta Islam is when it comes to making laws in accordance with Islam.
This inclusion of Islam in the Constitution may also just be a bargaining ploy. The Shi’ites get the Sunnins to sign on to the new Constitution, get the country going to the point where it’s impossible to pull out, and then strip out the offending provision about Islam.
Considering the state of modern Iran, if Iraqi Shi’ites are paying any attention, and they certainly must be, it’s not likely that they will want to make the same mistake and follow Khomeini’s deviation.
August 19th, 2005 at 7:08 pm
Shi’ites are the key to secular, democratic rule in the Muslim world. America’s 25-year conflict with Shi’ite Iran somewhat obscures the fact that Shi’ites, more than Sunnis, are receptive to a non-religious representative democracy. Khomeini, for all his power and achievement, was not really in the political mainstream of the Shi’ite sect (if so, he would have been in Karbala or Najaf, not Iran).
Theologically, the key to Shi’ism is the concept of the imam, which in Arabic means roughly “leader,” and in the usual Sunni sense would mean “leader of daily prayers in a mosque” or even “religious scholar.” But it has a much deeper meaning to the Shi’ites, something like “person of intrinsic spiritual power, perfect interpreter of prophetic revelation, intermediary between man and God.”
There were only 12 of them (in the main branch of Shi’ism), and all were descendants of the Prophet. They were hounded and assassinated by the caliphs, who rightly saw them as a threat to their political authority, and the last one vanished in the 10th century C.E. The Shi’ites say that, like King Arthur in some British legends, the last Imam is not dead but in hiding, still in the world, directing affairs unseen. And he will return at the end as the Mahdi (hence the name of al-Sadr’s army).
But until then, he can’t be consulted, and with the Imam in “occlusion,” the world is left in an imperfect state. Every form of government is necessarily imperfect, since the imperfection of people is reflected in their institutions. The political position of the Shi’ites, then, is a search for the least imperfect form of government.
Historically, the Shi’ites generally do not look to the “caliphate” as the legitimate Muslim political authority, though they often have supported it as a matter of accepting the prevailing political situation. They have been monarchists in the past, and democrats in the present. And they could set an example in Iraq that the rest of the Middle East, in spite of political prejudice, will come to envy and emulate.
August 27th, 2005 at 11:30 am
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