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by Paul R. Hollrah, Advisor to Lincoln Heritage Institute
The September 2005 edition of Imprimis, the national speech digest published by Hillsdale College, contains excerpts of a speech by political commentator George F. Will, titled “The Doctrine of Preemption.”
In his speech Will quotes George W. Bush, who, in borrowing a phrase from Ronald Reagan, charged that it is “cultural condescension” to say that some people in the world are “not ready
for democracy.” Cultural condescension? Hardly.
Yes, the Bush Doctrine of Preemption is a correct one because the enemy we now face has no “home address.” In World War II our enemies had home addresses in Berlin and Tokyo. When we wanted to hurt them we knew where to deliver the bombs. Even in Vietnam, we knew our enemy’s “home address,” although the president (Lyndon Johnson) put the enemy’s home base off limits for most of the war. But so long as we are fighting a numerous and widely dispersed enemy, we must be able to hunt him down and kill him whenever and wherever we find him.
But that’s as far as it goes. Finding and defeating an enemy who wants to kill us does not equate to a need to establish democratic governments in countries of the Middle East, the Far East, or anywhere else.
As Americans, we subscribe to the words of the Declaration of Independence. They are the heart and soul of our heritage. We believe it to be a self-evident truth 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. By subscribing to those ideals we assume a moral obligation to see to it that no man, woman, or child, anywhere, is forced to live in slavery or without the ability to pursue happiness.
But that brings us to the question of whether Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness can occur only in a democracy. Are we to believe that those blessings are impossible under authoritarian socialist, monarchist, or tribal regimes? That is utter nonsense. Democracy is clearly the best choice, for us, but some may make other choices for themselves.
The Bush foreign policy is rooted in the notion that we have an obligation to spread the benefits of democracy throughout the nations of the world, even to peoples who’ve never experienced it and have no passion for it. In Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, our goal has been to not only remove cruel and dangerous regimes, but to stay behind and impose democratic governments on the indigenous populations. To suggest that nomadic goat herders in the deserts of Syria, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia lay awake at night dreaming of the day when they might be elected to a seat in their country’s parliament, is beyond reason.
To suggest that members of tribal patriarchies in the most primitive regions of Africa yearn for the opportunity to be democratically-elected tribal chieftains is sheer nonsense. Most residents of the Third World are not concerned with such matters. The great outdoors represents liberty for them and having food to eat and a roof over their heads is their happiness.
To suggest that not all peoples of the world yearn for or are even capable of appreciating the fruits of democracy is not “cultural condescension,” it is simple reality.
Colin Powell is famous for his “Pottery Barn Principle” of modern warfare, which says, “If you break it, you own it.” We have “broken” Iraq, and in that respect we now share some responsibility for restoring its infrastructure, providing basic human needs for its people, and helping them to reestablish their economy. But does Powell’s “Pottery Barn Principle” mean that we must also decide what form of government they should have after we’re gone?
Now we are confronted with a democratically elected parliament in what was to be a Palestinian state. But the party we wanted and expected to win, didn’t. In fact, the members of Hamas, the radical terrorists dedicated to the total annihilation of Israel, didn’t expect to win…but they did. The bad guys were democratically elected and now we’re stuck with them. It’s a dilemma.
If there is a major miscalculation in our Middle Eastern policy, it was not in our decision to remove Saddam or in pushing a “roadmap to peace” in Israel and Palestine. It was in deciding we had to make the Iraqis, the Palestinians, and the Saudis look like a mirror image of ourselves, politically.
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