Islamic Democracy? We Hope?

An article in the New York Times this morning about Islam points out how careful we should be about how we approach the region. The article argues that Egyptians are coming to identify themselves more than as Egyptians or as Arabs. The key points are:

Hezbollah’s perceived triumph has propelled, and been propelled by, a wave already washing over the region. Political Islam was widely seen as the antidote to the failures of Arab nationalism, Communism, socialism and, most recently, what is seen as the false promise of American-style democracy....The lesson learned by many Arabs from the war in Lebanon is that an Islamic movement, in this case Hezbollah, restored dignity and honor to a bruised and battered identity....Hezbollah’s perceived victory has highlighted, and to many people here validated, the rise of another unifying ideology, a kind of Arab-Islamic nationalism.

Of course, these three elements of identity are intertwined, but it matters which one is prominent. Until 1967, Nasser’s successes made Arabism seem to be the wave of the future. After the perceived success of the October War, Sadat made an Egypt-centered identity respectable. Now, with the success of Hezbollah in tweaking Israel's nose in Lebanon and the success of Al-Qaeda and the other Islamic fundamentalist groups elsewhere, a devotion to Islam seems to promise a way to gain self-respect and the world's respect.

Behind the growth of Islam lie myriad failures. In some ways the defeat in the Six-Day War at the hands of Israel is still felt. Arab failures in science, in economics, and in politics when compared to the world-changing success of the West, has left the Arab world hungry for the kind of achievements that once had Baghdad the capitol of a legendary, thriving empire.

Egyptians and Arabs more generally see nothing like that. They see regimes that are corrupt, intellectually bankrupt, and either weak or tyrannous.

We hope to make these regimes democratic. We assume that if they become democratic, beholden to the people, they will become a source of pride and lead to achievements that will make the Arab world thrive. That assumption is partly true: pride and achievement are not the necessary result of democracy, but in the modern world it is hard to sustain either without it.

A danger is that the democracy we promote will be seen as antithetical to Islam. Certainly Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants think it is. Many in the West have questioned whether democracy and Islam are compatible. And, in truth we will find little comfort in the pronouncements of religious parties.

Yet we must be willing to tolerate parties that are willing to compete in democratic elections, promise to retain the political structures essential to a democracy, and declare themselves bound by the expressed will of the electorate. Are there such parties? I don't yet know. Perhaps.

The essential thing is that we cannot allow democracy and America to become so intertwined in the minds of the Arab world that they will abandon the promise of the former out of distaste for the latter. In the long run, the establishment of democratic regimes will benefit us. In the short run, however, we find them hard to like and to comprehend.

Lebanon's Cost in Iraq

The United States has shown unequivocal support for Israel in the current conflict in Lebanon. This is not new for the Bush administration, which long ago abandoned anything resembling even-handedness in dealing with Israel and its enemies. Through much of the conflict we have been able to play the role of honest broker, making it possible for Henry Kissinger and Presidents Carter and Clinton to mediate between Israel and Egypt, Syria, and the Palestinians. Now we express "our strong concern about the impact of Israeli military operations on innocent civilians," but put no pressure on Israel to end those operations before it is ready. That statement is about the current crisis, but the approach is the same taken toward every Israeli attack since the Bush administration came into office.

Now, let me quickly say, that Israel has been reacting to strong provocation. Neither Hezbollah nor Hamas, nor Fatah before its electoral defeat behaved responsibly. All three fostered terrorism; all three deserve much of the punishment that Israel has dealt out. But it has not been in the longer-term interests of Israel to have the United States seen to be Israel's apologist. Instead, Israel needs to have a United States that can speak to and negotiate with all parties in these conflicts. Only with American mediation can Israel hope to get the peace that Israel, like everyone in the Middle East, needs.

The actions of the administration in the current crisis have added to the view, held by many in the Arab "street", that the United States is an enemy of the Arab world. Not only do we fully back Israeli actions, we also refuse to speak to Syria even as we make demands of it. Nor do we speak to Hezbollah, Hamas, or Iran. As I've written in other entries, this has had its costs.

One cost that has been mentioned rarely if at all, is that it becomes ever more difficult for people in Iraq to gravitate toward us. We play into the hands of those that hate and fight us in Iraq--including Al Qaeda and its allies--by siding completely with Israel.

This is not true only of the jihadists and those irreconcilably opposed to the United States. One of the characteristics of the Arab world and parts of the Moslem world more generally, including Iran, is that many take events in the Arab-Israeli conflict personally. This is similar to the way many Americans understand the September 11 attacks: Mohammed Atta and his team were attacking not just on strangers in distant cities but all of us. For Arabs, for Iraqis, Israel's attacks are similar; Israel's successes are the failures of all Arabs.

So when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki came to the United States, he condemned Israel's "hostile acts against Lebanon" and was under pressure from parties within Iraq's parliament to cancel the trip altogether. He remarks garnered criticism here, but they were the least he could do.

The criticism of Maliki was ill-considered. One hopes that the need for him to make it has entered the considerations of those developing our policy toward Israel and the conflict in Lebanon.