Slam-Dunk Democracy?

by Paul R. Hollrah: LHI Contributor


Victor Davis Hanson is one of America's foremost contemporary historians. In a recent essay, "The Disenchanted American – Are we growing world weary?" he speculates on what the world would be like if America hadn't been around during the last fifteen years. He paints a grim picture.

As Hanson imagines that world, Iraq, Iran, and Libya would now have nuclear weapons. Afghanistan would be an Islamic terrorist haven, exporting Bin Laden and Zarqawi-style terrorism around the world. Noriega, Milocevic, Saddam, and Qaddafi would be the torchbearers of human rights at the United Nations. Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro would be the exemplars of Latin American nationalism. Bosnia and Kosovo would be hellholes of rotting corpses, much like the killing fields of Cambodia.

Kurdistan would be another graveyard, a proving ground for Saddam's latest chemical and biological weaponry. Most nations of the Middle East would be erecting statues to Saddam, pledging allegiance to the man who controlled half the world's oil reserves – and the world price of oil. North Korea's latest ICBMs would be streaking through the skies over Japan, test fired from bases at Seoul and Pusan. And in their own defense, Germany, Japan, and Taiwan would have developed nuclear weapons.

Hanson reasons that, "Americans know all that – and yet they grasp that their own vigilance and military sacrifice have earned them spite rather than gratitude."

That's true, of course, but why do Americans feel that way? Could we be so small-minded that we would worry about having our hands bitten by the ingrates we feed? Are we really that petulant? I don't think so. Although few Americans can put their feelings into words, I think there is a much deeper, much more profound reason why many of us have "gone all wobbly" – as Margaret Thatcher might have put it.

I believe that, deep down, most Americans have lingering doubts that our goal should be one of bringing democracy to the nations of the Middle East. When President Bush and other leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike, tell us that democracy is the "only hope for a lasting peace in the Middle East," most Americans stand up and salute the flag.

But, in their hearts, I think that most Americans feel a great deal of uncertainty about that dubious concept, especially when so much American blood must be spilled to make it happen. I think that most Americans remain unconvinced that democratization should be our goal.

Are we really to believe that democracy is a panacea for every nation, every culture, on the face of the Earth? Certainly not. In spite of the fact that few Americans could write a cogent essay on the difference between a democracy and a republic, democracy works in our country because we have a long democratic tradition, rooted in the British Common Law – a tradition that goes back to the signing of the Magna Charta. Few nations outside Europe and North America share that tradition.

To suggest that tribesmen in the mountains of Afghanistan lay awake at night thirsting for the right to vote, to suggest that nomads in a Middle Eastern desert might aspire to run for public office, to suggest that Hutu tribesmen in Rwanda might lay down their machetes long enough to attend a political rally, to suggest that a bunch of Sunni Muslims – who behead their enemies and who treat their cattle better than they treat their women – will suddenly submit to the authority of Shiites, is sheer nonsense. In spite of what George W. Bush might say, democracy is not for everyone – and we should not pretend that it is.

Most Americans, because we are Americans, subscribe to the clear and unambiguous words of the Declaration of Independence. We declare that "all men are created equal," and that they are "endowed by their Creator" with the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." But by subscribing to those words we take upon ourselves a moral obligation to see to it that no man, woman, or child on Earth should ever live in bondage.

By subscribing to those words we become morally bound to remove a Saddam Hussein from power, to shut down his rape rooms and his torture chambers, and to end the filling of mass graves. But that's as far as it goes. It does not obligate us to make democrats of the people he has brutalized. That is their choice, not ours. It is simply not possible to "slam-dunk" non-democrats into being overnight democrats, and we should not spill American blood pretending that it is.