Just two months ago, the Iraq Study Group suggested that promoting democracy in the Middle East is a noble goal, but it’s probably not the top priority in the region right now. It prompted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, just a few weeks ago, to remind everyone of the administration’s agenda and vision: “Rice also said there would be no retreat from the administration’s push to promote democracy in the Middle East, a goal that was de-emphasized by the Iraq Study Group in its report…but that Rice insisted was a ‘matter of strategic interest.'”
This week, it looks like Rice didn’t really mean it.
In the days before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with officials in Egypt, the news media here were filled with stories detailing charges of corruption, cronyism, torture and political repression.
Cellphone videos posted on the Internet showed the police sodomizing a bus driver with a broomstick. Another showed the police hanging a woman by her knees and wrists from a pole for questioning. A company partly owned by a member of the governing party distributed tens of thousands of bags of contaminated blood to hospitals around the country. And just 24 hours before Ms. Rice arrived, the authorities arrested a television reporter on charges of harming national interests by making a film about police torture. The reporter was released, but the authorities kept the tapes.
Ms. Rice, who once lectured Egyptians on the need to respect the rule of law, did not address those domestic concerns. Instead, with Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit by her side, she talked about her appreciation for Egypt’s support in the region.
It was clear that the United States — facing chaos in Iraq, rising Iranian influence and the destabilizing Israeli-Palestinian conflict — had decided that stability, not democracy, was its priority, Egyptian political commentators, political aides and human rights advocates said.
The fact is, there’s a reasonable case to be made that stability-over-democracy is a realistic, pragmatic approach to the Middle East. If that means supporting oppressive regimes, and considering them allies, one could make the case that it’s worth it, at least in the short term.
The problem, as I see it, is that this isn’t the administration’s argument at all. The Bush gang continues to maintain the facade that their top strategic goal is to bring liberal democracies to the Middle East, stand up to oppressive regimes wherever they are found, and embrace countries like Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia as our allies and partners.
Consider these presidential comments from a few months ago.
“The current crisis is part of a larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror in the Middle East. For decades, the status quo in the Middle East permitted tyranny and terror to thrive. And as we saw on September the 11th, the status quo in the Middle East led to death and destruction in the United States, and it had to change. So America is opposing the forces of terror and promoting the cause of democracy across the broader Middle East.
“This task is long, it is difficult work, but it is necessary work. When democracy spreads in the Middle East the people of that troubled region will have a better future. The terrorists will lose their safe havens and their recruits, and the United States of America will be more secure. The hard work of helping people realize the benefits of liberty is laying the foundation of peace for generations to come.”
That’s very nice rhetoric, which Bush didn’t mean a word of.
Kevin Drum had a tremendous post on the subject in April. I hope he won’t mind if I quote it liberally.
Prior to the invasion of Iraq, Bush barely even mentioned democracy promotion as a reason for war. In the 2003 State of the Union Address he devoted over a thousand words to Iraq and didn’t mention democracy once. Paul Wolfowitz specifically left out democracy promotion as a major goal of the war when he later recounted the administration’s internal decision making process for Sam Tannenhaus. Nor did the invasion itself envision democracy in Iraq as its goal. Rather, the plan was to install some favored exiles as proconsuls and reduce our military presence to 30,000 troops almost immediately. […]
What’s more, in the surrounding regions, Bush has shown himself to be exactly the type of realist he supposedly derides. Hamas won elections in Palestine and he immediately tried to undermine them. Egypt held sham elections and got nothing more than a bit of mild tut tutting. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia remain our closest allies. […]
These decisions may or may not be defensible, but they are plainly not the decisions of a man dedicated to spreading democracy — and the fact that he repeatedly says otherwise doesn’t change this. So once and for all, can we please stop hearing about democracy promotion as a central goal of the Bush administration? It’s just a slogan and nothing more.
Agreed.