Whither Democracy?

I am no political scientist and don't pretend to be one. What I know I've gleaned from my reporting days and, since then, from what I've read and observed. That said, I knew plenty to realize from the outset that Washington's grandiose plan to bring democracy to Iraq and, from there, to the Middle East was doomed to failure.

Americans have a vision of themselves as exceptional, unique and, frankly, superior. They believe their form of democracy to be the ideal and, if you fervently believed that, how could you not want to share that with other, less fortunate nations?

The approach is both simplistic and naive. Look around the world today and you'll quickly see that democracy comes in an array of shapes and styles. Think of democracy as a pair of shoes. One person may like size 10 loafers. But what if that person decides that someone with a size 8 or a size 12 foot should also wear size 10 loafers? What if the chosen someone happens to live and work in the arctic?

Abraham Lincoln understood the true meaning of democracy. In his Gettysburg Address he stated it quite succinctly as, "government of the people, by the people, for the people." It must be a government defined by an electorate, controlled by an electorate and which serves the electorate. Nothing else will do.

Where we stumble is in the flawed belief that global democracy will yield a sort of democratic uniformity and that is simply nonsense. Any given people will shape their democratic system and institutions to accommodate their own cultural, religious, social, ethnic and traditional values. American democracy has had more than two centuries to adapt to American values but even there it had to endure major challenges such as civil war, slavery, universal suffrage. How could that model possibly suit some other nation with so many values different than our own?

When a people exercise their democratic franchise, we're not always happy with the result. The Palestinian people chose Hamas as their leaders and some Shia Lebanese gave Hezbollah a number of seats in the Lebanese government. Washington is furious about those events and has learned to be wary of what democracy might bring to strategic Middle Eastern allies such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia.

Since the Second World War, America hasn't always supported democracy. In Iran it toppled the democratically-elected government and installed the Shah and a brutal, police state in its stead. In Chile, America collaborated with the generals to stage a coup and murder the elected President, Salvador Allende. The U.S. has also freely used its power and wealth to manipulate elections in other nations such as Afghanistan and the Ukraine. Imagine if the European Union decided to covertly send massive amounts of money to America to help topple the Republican government.

Democracy is like a living thing. The idea needs to be planted when the conditions are right for it to take hold. It needs to be nurtured and tended. If all the necessary conditions are in place it might grow but it is going to begin as a mere, fragile seedling. With time, and a lot of luck, it may become a tree but, even then, that tree will be a creature of its immediate environment.

In 1988, Patrick Watson, one of the finest journalists ever to come out of the CBC, crafted an excellent, 10-part series called, "The Struggle for Democracy." Part of the programme entailed a survey of widely different styles of democracy that had emerged in different corners of the world. I was lucky enough to have watched Watson's 'Democracy.' 28-years later, this would probably be a good time for CBC to air an updated version of the original.

We need to be both realistic and infinitely patient in our expectations and demands for the spread of democracy. Remember, it took Western civilization the better part of two millenia to evolve the democratic institutions we take for granted today and there were many conflicts and setbacks along the way. Introducing and establishing democracy in a place where it has never been is so much more than just changing a form of government or rule. Democracy by its very nature impacts other aspects of society whether that be cultural, ethnic, religious, social or economic. Each must adapt to the others and to a new order. That takes time and a lot of trial and error if it is to succeed. Just as we have learned to accept and respect other religions and cultures, so we need to learn to respect democracy in all its forms and at all its stages even if other democratic states aren't to our political or economic liking.


21 August, 2006 - This Just In

Word is beginning to circulate in Washington that the Bush administration is having second thoughts about democracy for Iraq. An article in today's "The Australian" following up an article published last week in "The New York Times" quotes an anonymous military affairs expert who attended a White House briefing and reported, "Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy (for Iraq)."

Sunday Times reporter, Andrew Sullivan notes, "There comes a point at which even Bush's platinum-strength levels of denial have to bow to reality. That point may be now. ...Recently Bush has been wondering why the Shi'ites in southern Iraq have displayed such ingratitude to the man who liberated them from Saddam. It does not seem to have occurred to him that a populace terrorised by invasion, sectarian murder, non-existent government and near anarchy might feel angry at the man who rid them of dictatorship but then refused to provide a minimal level of security for the aftermath. And so, the frustrated born-again neocon in Bush may be ceding to the caucus of those dubbed the "to-hell-with-them" hawks.

So much for the hollow promise of occupying Iraq to plant the seed of democracy in the Muslim world. The flimsy weapons of mass destruction thing slipped through Bush's fingers a long time ago as did Baghdad as a supporter of international terrorism. They're down to Saddam, that's all they have left to justify this fiasco and, if America does move to instal another dictator in Iraq, then this whole business was a hideous, horrid mistake, an utter FUBAR.

This morning's Globe & Mail has a headline that exults in Canada's awesome victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan yesterday. I guess it's supposed to be a bit of good news to wipe away the grief Canadians have felt over the succession of deaths of our own over the past month. It's even got a body count and it looks as though we killed a few dozen insurgents for no losses of our own. I guess that's it then. We should probably tell the Taliban where we would like them to line up to surrender.

We're now using body counts to measure victory. It has come to that. What a powerful instrument of self-delusion. It's not a matter of how many we kill, it's a matter of how many will come in to replace them. It isn't a matter of wiping out a bunch of insurgents at one village, it's which side will control this village in a few days when we've gone back to the safety of our garrison. When it really comes down to it, it's a matter of which side has the will to outlast the other. In their decade-long war in Vietnam, US forces never lost a battle, not one. They killed their enemies by the hundreds of thousands. The only thing the Americans lost in Vietnam was the war itself.

I guess in politics, timing is everything. Poor Stephen Harper. Canada's pretend prime minister took over just in time to see those he most wants to emulate, George Bush and Tony Blair, crash and burn in their own countries. We know from an article Harper wrote to an American paper back in 2003 that, back then, he would've been delighted to be prime minister and send Canadian soldiers into Iraq. Harper believes Canada should stand "shoulder to shoulder" with this gang of ideological incompetents. Oh, Canada!