Last year,
Pres. Bush invited this Israeli author/diplomat and former Soviet dissident to
visit him in the White House and publicly recommended his book, The Case for Democracy:
The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny & Terror. He even cited him in his 2005 State of the Union speech. Now,
Mr. Sharanksy joins the critics who say the Bush rhetoric does not match its
policy.
Related links,
below. kwc
Does democracy end
tyranny?
By Natan Sharansky, in the Los Angeles Times, March 05, 2006
Natan Sharansky, a distinguished fellow at the
Shalem Center in Israel, is a former Soviet dissident who spent nine years in a
KGB prison. Later, he served as a member of the Israeli government as Minister
of Diaspora Affairs.
THE U.S. AGENDA to promote democracy in the Middle East appears fatally
wounded. The results of recent elections in Iraq, Egypt and especially Gaza and
the West Bank have led many to conclude that this agenda is terribly misguided:
wonderful in theory but disastrous in practice, enabling the most dangerous and
antidemocratic elements in the region to gain power through democratic means.
If true, this is certainly a worrisome turn of events. Can the skeptics be
right? Is it simply too dangerous to promote freedom in the Arab world? Must
the United States give up on promoting democracy and go back to supporting
authoritarian governments that do its bidding?
That was the old policy. But foreign policy "realism" — the notion
that the free world could buy security by supporting repressive dictators who
would act in American national interests — collapsed on 9/11. That was when it
became clear to many policymakers that regimes that repressed their subjects
were creating breeding grounds of fanaticism and terror.
Today, many people believe that the antidote to fanaticism is to open these
societies to dissent, to the free exchange of ideas, to the opportunities
offered by a free market and to the hope that comes with democratic life.
Based on this diagnosis, President Bush launched a bold policy that promised to
give democracy a central place in American statecraft. In terms of rhetoric,
the change was indeed dramatic. In his second inaugural address, Bush promised
to support democratic movements everywhere with the goal of "ending
tyranny" in our world. By declaring terrorists to be our enemies and
democrats to be our partners, Bush injected an indispensable dose of moral
clarity into U.S. policy.
But, despite what I believe to be the president's genuine commitment to promote
sweeping change, the policy shift hasn't matched the rhetoric, with one glaring
exception: an intense focus on holding elections everywhere as quickly as
possible. This has been a mistake because, although elections are part of the
democratic process, they are never a substitute for it.
I believed this when I submitted a plan to Ariel Sharon in April 2002 for a
political process that would culminate in the creation of a peaceful,
democratic Palestinian state alongside Israel. At the time, no one was thinking
seriously about peace because, after the worst month of terror attacks in
Israel's history, we had launched a large-scale military operation to root out
the infrastructure of terrorism in the West Bank.
I believed, however, that the crisis presented an opportunity to begin a
different kind of political process, one that would link the peace process to
the development of a free society for Palestinians. I had argued for many years
that peace and security could be achieved only by linking international
legitimacy, territorial concessions and financial assistance for a new
Palestinian regime to its commitment to building a free society.
Despite my faith in "democracy," I was under no illusion that
elections should be held immediately. Over the previous decade, Palestinian
society had become one of the most poisoned and fanatical on Earth. Day after
day, on television and radio, in newspapers and schools, a generation of
Palestinians had been subjected to the most vicious incitement by their own
leaders. The only "right" that seemed to be upheld within Palestinian
areas was the right of everyone to bear arms.
In such conditions of fear, intimidation and indoctrination, holding snap
elections would have been an act of the utmost irresponsibility. That is why I
proposed a plan calling for elections to be held no earlier than three years
after the implementation of a series of democratic reforms. Three years, I
believed, was the absolute minimum for democratic reforms to begin to change
the atmosphere in which free elections could be held. Unfortunately, the plan
was never implemented.
The recent election of Hamas is the fruit of a policy that focused on the form
of democracy (elections) rather than its substance (building and protecting a
free society). Rather than push for quick elections, the democratic world must
use its considerable moral, political and economic leverage to help build free
societies in the Middle East. We should tie trade privileges to economic
freedoms, encourage foreign diplomats to meet openly with dissidents and link
aid to the protection of dissents (as Bush did when he helped force the release
of Egyptian democracy advocate Saad Eddin Ibrahim).
Any regime, elected or not, that works to build a free society should be seen
as a partner, if not a friend. Likewise, any regime, elected or not, that
chokes freedom should be seen as an adversary, if not an enemy. Obviously, any
regime that supports terrorism is hostile to the most fundamental principles of
a free society and should therefore be treated as an enemy.
Helping democracy take root in the Arab world will take time and persistence.
Most Arab governments will try to stamp out any spark of liberty. But the
democrats within these societies are our partners. We can help them by refusing
to support those who repress them, and by making clear through both our
statements and our policies that the efforts to expand freedom within their
societies will benefit their countries as much as ours. The alternative is to
return to the pre-9/11 delusion that a tyrant's repression of his own subjects
has no consequences for us.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-sharansky5mar05,0,37202.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
Tom Barry 020805 The Foreign Policy Diaspora, from Jerusalem to Washington
The State of the
Union Address and Bush’s second Inaugural Address focused U.S. and
international attention on Natan Sharansky, author of The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to
Overcome Tyranny & Terror. Pundits and reporters noted that the
president’s lofty rhetoric about “ending tyranny in our world” and guaranteeing
“freedom from fear” echoed Sharansky’s language.
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2005/0502sharansky.php
Ezra Klein Another
Bush policy defector…”This had happened before to Ted Kennedy on No Child Left
Behind and John Dilulio on faith-based initiatives. Bush reaches out to an
icon, champions their ideas, and either perverts or abandons them in the
implementation, leading to eventual alienation and condemnation from the leader
who, months before, Bush credited with providing his policy direction. But the
press never attends to the break-up with the interest they showed in the
relationship's early days, and so the pattern is able to repeat itself.”
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2006/03/index.html#009331
Other recent Bush conservative contrarians
Wm. F. Buckley It Didn’t Work http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley200602241451.asp
Francis Fukuyama After
Neoconservatism: As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the
Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the
intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the
Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced
Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist
terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at.
The United States
still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new
government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will
invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There
are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's
dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria.
But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the
blood and treasure that the US has spent on the project to this point. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/magazine/neo.html?incamp=article_popular_4
And George Will’s latest, having jumped on board the conservative Bush defector
wagon last year
George Will The Rhetoric
of Unreality: where is Iraq after 3 years of war? “After Iraqis voted in December for
sectarian politics, an observer said Iraq had conducted not an election but a
census. Now America's heroic ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, one of two
indispensable men in Iraq, has warned the Iraqi political class that unless the
defense and interior ministries are nonsectarian, meaning not run as
instruments of the Shiites, the United States will have to reconsider its
support for Iraq's military and police. But that threat is not credible: U.S. strategy in Iraq by now
involves little more than making the Iraqi military and police competent. As the president said last week:
"Our strategy in Iraq is that the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand
down."
Iraq's prime minister responded to Khalilzad's warning by accusing him
of interfering in Iraq's "internal affairs." Think about that, and about
the distinction drawn by the U.S. official in Iraq who, evidently looking on
what he considers the bright side, told Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins, "This isn't a war. It's violent
nation-building."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/01/AR2006030101935.html
