OK, just one more post about startling comments from Bush’s press conference yesterday (I warned you it was a gold mine).
A reporter asked a basic and important question. Noting that Joe Biden called al Qaeda in Iraq a “Bush-fulfilling prophecy,” the reporter asked the president why he doesn’t just “get out of the middle of a civil war and fight al Qaeda.” Bush, of course, reflexively dodged the substance of the question, but his response was interesting anyway.
“The Middle East looked nice and cozy for awhile. Everything looked fine on the surface, but beneath the surface, there was a lot of resentment, there was a lot of frustration, such that 19 kids got on airplanes and killed 3,000 Americans. It’s in the long-term interest of this country to address the root causes of these extremists and radicals exploiting people that cause them to kill themselves and kill Americans and others.
“I happen to believe one way to do that is to address the forms of government under which people live. Democracy is really difficult work, but democracy has proven to help change parts of the world from cauldrons of frustration to areas of hope. And we will continue to pursue this form of policy; it’s in our national interest we do so.”
Remind us, Mr. President, at what point did the Middle East look “nice and cozy”?
Regardless, and with an acknowledgement that it would have been nice if the president had at least tried to answer the question, let’s consider the response at face value. The solution to the root causes of terrorism, Bush believes, is democracy. This, too, reflects a certain disconnect between the president’s ideology and reality.
For one thing, offering the people of the Middle East a chance to vote doesn’t necessarily make the region free of extremism. As Fred Kaplan noted, “Hezbollah became a major political party in Lebanon, Islamist militia leaders gained a foothold in the government in Iraq, Hamas came to power in the Palestinian territories — all through democratic elections that the Bush administration encouraged.”
For another, Bush’s democracy talk has always been more about rhetorical games than actual policy.
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. If the president were concerned about “resentment” that comes when people are denied democracy and democratic institutions in the Middle East, he wouldn’t defend Mubarak in Egypt, and he wouldn’t pretend Musharraf led a democracy in Pakistan.