Sighted in Egypt: A Burning Bush

The "Bush Spring" continues its tour, and recently played the pyramids:

Egyptian legislators in one chamber voted Saturday to allow the country's first presidential elections with more than one candidate.

A week after President Hosni Mubarak surprised the nation by ordering elections with a choice for president, legislators in the parliament's upper house approved the constitutional amendment sanctioning such a ballot.

The amendment still needs to be approved by parliament's lower house, and no date is set on when it will meet to discuss the change.

It will be the first time in Egypt's modern history that the country can vote for more than one presidential candidate. Previously people had to vote "yes" or "no" for a single candidate approved by both houses of parliament.

The Egyptian street is joyous:

Egyptian student Aida Yehia has known no president but Hosni Mubarak.

So when Mubarak unexpectedly pledged last week to allow more than one candidate to run in presidential elections, the senior at American University in Cairo enthusiastically called it "a major step" her nation "desperately" needs.

"This is going to be a real democracy," she said. "Every candidate is going to ... show you his real agenda and ideas and hopefully bring more changes to Egypt."

Even the professional nay-sayers are cautiously optimistic:

First, Washington should use its aid and influence to encourage economic growth that benefits all of Egyptian society. It is important that poor Egyptians begin to benefit from economic growth and better government services, including reliable water, sanitation, education, electricity and health care. A growing, more stable middle class would provide a strong foundation for democracy. It would also address one of Mubarak's bigger fears -- the influence of the Muslim radicals.

Second, the United States can reasonably expect Egypt's president to use his last term to make constitutional changes that will allow his successor and Egypt's parliament to be picked in open, free and fair elections -- a change beyond that which Mubarak announced over the weekend. Such moves are in accordance with U.S. principles and interests. But a move toward an open, participatory political society serves Egypt's interests first and foremost by allowing for the continuation of a stable peaceful society, which all Egyptians want.

Third, Washington must continue its efforts to strengthen civil society in Egypt and the institutions that undergird a free market and democratic political order. It is important to argue that Egypt should stop harassing and arresting opposition politicians and others campaigning for orderly change. Paranoia about opposition sometimes makes Egypt's leaders look like elephants recoiling before mice. Egyptian police recently arrested a young college student for handing out pamphlets calling for constitutional change. The student was released after several days, but such actions send a chilling signal about political debate.

The ripples from the string of political earthquakes have propagated even to America, according to Arabist Fouad Ajami in US News and World Report:

In retrospect, it was an appearance by President George W. Bush before the National Endowment for Democracy, in November 2003, that signaled the birth of a new "diplomacy of freedom" in the Arab world. The American military effort in Iraq was in its early stages then; the euphoria of the military campaign had ended, and a war of attrition had begun. Saddam Hussein was still on the loose, and there was no trace of those vaunted weapons of mass destruction that had taken us to war. At that uncertain hour, Bush proposed nothing less than a break with the ways of American diplomacy in the region. "Sixty years of western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run," he said, "stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export."

Today the Arab world is beset by a mighty storm. For decades, the American choice in Arab-Islamic lands was stark. The "civil society" there was truculent and malignantly anti-American, while the rulers seemed like eminently reasonable men willing to strike bargains in the shadows. It was easy to accept their authoritarianism as the cultural practice of the Arabs: This was what Bush called the "soft bigotry of low expectations."

Fareed Zakaria admits the same, in Newsweek's cover story:

Whether or not George W. Bush deserves credit for everything that is happening in the Middle East, he has been fundamentally right about some big things, Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria writes in Newsweek's March 14 cover story, "People Power -- Across the Arab World"


Newsweek, March 7th (click to enlarge)

In his essay, "What Bush Got Right," Zakaria writes that Bush never accepted the view that Islamic terrorism had its roots in religion or culture or the Arab-Israeli conflict. Instead, Bush veered toward the analysis that the region was breeding terror because it had developed deep dysfunctions caused by decades of repression and an almost total lack of political, economic and social modernization. His solution, therefore, was to push for reform in these lands. The theory did not originate with Bush's administration. But Bush's adoption of it, Zakaria argues, was absolutely crucial because he had the power to pressure the region's regimes.

Bush's capacity to imagine a different Middle East may actually be related to his relative ignorance of the region, Zakaria writes. Had the president traveled to the Middle East more and seen its many dysfunctions, he might have been disheartened. Freed from looking at the day-to-day realities, Bush maintained a vision of what the region could look like. . . .

For most countries, the debate over Iraq was about how America would wield its enormous global power. And to many countries, Zakaria reports, it seemed that the Bush administration was doing it irresponsibly. If, five years from now, Iraq, Afghanistan and perhaps an independent Palestine and a democratic Lebanon are thriving countries with modern political and economic systems, America will be honored and respected. If, on the other hand, these countries are chaotic and troubled, people there will blame America. Remember, all politics is local.

In the cover package's second report, Middle East Regional Editor Christopher Dickey writes that for people in the Middle East, the last few weeks have been ones of wonderment. Each experiment with freedom is helping to build democratic momentum, and after so much bad news out of the region, there's suddenly so much good that the Bush administration finds itself basking in vindication.

Though they can't quite concede Bush changed the weather, The Times (London) sees an "Arab Spring":

It is too soon to say that there is a domino effect under way in the Middle East as powerful as the one that ended the Soviet Union 13 years ago. But the recent elections in Iraq, Palestine and Saudi Arabia, and now President Hosni Mubarak’s first significant move towards Egyptian political reform in decades — under pressure from Washington he is allowing other candidates to challenge him in a presidential election — are indicators of a political shift.

So, too, is the stunning resignation of Lebanon’s government and the street protests in Beirut demanding free and fair parliamentary elections this spring and an end to Syrian occupation following the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister.

For both the Arabs and the Americans, this dramatic political awakening offers a difficult paradox.

Sixteen months ago Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze leader, described Paul Wolfowitz, the American deputy secretary of defence, as a “filthy son of a harlot of Zion” and hoped for the early death of “people like him in Washington who are spreading disorder in Arab lands, Iraq and Palestine”.

Yet it is Jumblatt who, as demonstrators took to the streets around him, galvanised the world’s attention by publicly recognising the role of these hated Americans as a catalyst for democratic reform. “It’s strange for me to say it,” he told The Washington Post last month in an interview that has reverberated around the world, “but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq.”

He went on: “I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8m of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.” For all that Iraq remains in dangerous turmoil, Jumblatt’s remarks lent iconic status. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Iraqi election is now a benchmark from which there can be no turning back — just as President George W Bush’s neoconservative allies had predicted. . .

In his inauguration speech in January, Bush singled out Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Washington’s chief Arab allies, as targets of reform. So it was that just over a week ago, in tandem with the arrest of Noor, Mubarak opened the door a fraction for Egypt’s first competitive election for president. Although it is almost a certainty that Mubarak will stay in power, his decision has aroused excitement in Cairo.

“I still can’t believe I am talking about an open presidential election in Egypt,” said Kassem, who is also vice-president of Noor’s party. “If I don’t get beaten up or arrested or dumped in a cell, I now think I may actually see democracy here within my lifetime.” . . .

Melia, a Democrat, added: “You don’t have to be an enthusiast for Bush to know that many of his critics were wrong. Making democracy a strategic goal for American interests in the world doesn’t sound so wacky any more.”

Roger Cohen, in America's "paper of record," sort-of seconds the motion:

The West has tried cold-war containment in the Middle East, living with conflict on a regional scale. It has tried the quiet or sometimes flagrant hypocrisy that characterized the response to the 1991 Algerian election or the decision to let 4,000 Saudi princes do what they like. What has not been tried is the proposition now being tested: that the Middle East is not some strange exception, but will, as Europe and the Americas have, find in democracy a cause for peace.

"I think the United States has shifted the momentum in its favor," said Paul Berman, the author of "Terror and Liberalism." "The jihadists' utopia in Afghanistan has been overthrown. We have given democratic ideas a chance in Iraq, although I think we did it badly. It was never Western liberals who were going to defeat these ideologues. It was the liberals of the Muslim and Arab world, and they are stronger today."

Then there's The Guardian's (UK) columnist Jonathan Freedland, a fierce critic of the war:

[T]t cannot be escaped: the US-led invasion of Iraq has changed the calculus in the region. The Lebanese protesters are surely emboldened by the knowledge that Syria is under heavy pressure, with US and France united in demanding its withdrawal. That pressure carries an extra sting if Damascus feels that the latest diplomatic signals - including Tony Blair's remark yesterday that Syria had had its "chance" but failed to take it and Condoleezza Rice's declaration that the country was "out of step with where the region is going" - translate crudely as "You're next". . .

This leaves opponents of the Iraq war in a tricky position, even if the PM is not about to rub our faces in the fact. Not only did we set our face against a military adventure which seems, even if indirectly, to have triggered a series of potentially welcome side effects; we also stood against the wider world-view that George Bush represented. What should we say now?

First, we ought to admit that the dark cloud of the Iraq war may have carried a silver lining. We can still argue that the war was wrong-headed, illegal, deceitful and too costly of human lives - and that its most important gain, the removal of Saddam, could have been achieved by other means. But we should be big enough to concede that it could yet have at least one good outcome.

Second, we have to say that the call for freedom throughout the Arab and Muslim world is a sound and just one - even if it is a Bush slogan and arguably code for the installation of malleable regimes. Put starkly, we cannot let ourselves fall into the trap of opposing democracy in the Middle East simply because Bush and Blair are calling for it. Sometimes your enemy's enemy is not your friend.

Next is Mark Steyn who, as usual, says it best. After reviewing the left's grudging, but gathering, praise for the Bush Doctrine, Steyn reminds them of the magnitude of their error:

Very big of you, pal. And I guess that's as near as a mea culpa as we're going to get: Even though Bush got everything wrong, it turned out right. Funny how that happens, isn't it? In a few years' time, they'll have it down pat -- just like they have with Eastern Europe. Oh, the Soviet bloc [the Middle East thugocracies] was bound to collapse anyway. Nothing to do with that simpleton Ronnie Raygun [Chimpy Bushitler]. In fact, all Raygun [Chimpy] did was delay the inevitable with his ridiculous arms buildup [illegal unprovoked Halliburton oil-grab], as many of us argued at the time: See my 1984 column ''Yuri Andropov, The Young, Smart, Sexy New Face Of Soviet Communism'' [see the April 2004 column ''Things Were Better Under Saddam": "The coalition has destroyed Baathism, says Rod Liddle, and with it all hopes of the emergence of secular democracy'' -- which was published -- really -- in the London Spectator.]

By the way, when's the next Not In Our Name rally? How about this Saturday? Millions of NIONists can flood into the centers of San Francisco, New York, Brussels and Paris to proclaim to folks in Iraq and Lebanon and Egypt and Syria and Jordan and Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority that all the changes under way in the region are most certainly Not In Their Name.

Well, I'm glad they're in mine. I got a lot of things wrong these last three years, but, looking at events this last week, I'm glad that, unlike the Nionist Entity, I got the big stuff right. On May 8, 2003, a couple of weeks after the fall of Saddam, I wrote:

You don't invade Iraq in order to invade everywhere else, you invade Iraq so you don't have to invade everywhere else.

And so it has turned out. . .

With hindsight, the fellow travelers were let off far too easily when the Iron Curtain fell like a discarded burqa. Little more than a decade later, they barely hesitated a moment before jumping in on the wrong side of history yet again. Not in your name? Don't worry, it's not.

Steyn's conclusion echoes a two year-old TechCentral column by OxBlog's Josh Chafetz. Written shortly after the fall of Baghdad, it deserves a re-run:

In my name, statues of a tyrant have been cast down, portraits of a tyrant have been stomped upon, and fear of a tyrant has dissipated. In my name, the courageous men and women of our coalition armed forces have largely been welcomed as liberators, not invaders. In my name, the residents of Baghdad shouted thank yous, "Good, George Bush!" and "Down Saddam!" to coalition troops. In my name, a Baghdad imam told a reporter, "I'm 49, but I never lived a single day. Only now will I start living. That Saddam Hussein is a murderer and a criminal."

In my name, the gates to a children's prison were thrown open, and kids whose only crime was that they refused to join Saddam's youth groups were free to go home to their families. Torture chambers have been discovered and shut down throughout the country. Political prisoners have been freed.

In my name, the al Qaeda-linked group Ansar al-Islam has been wiped from the face of the earth, with the help of our brave Kurdish allies. The Kurds no longer live in fear of being attacked with weapons of mass destruction, and those who have ordered such attacks in the past are either dead or in hiding. In my name, the ones who survive will be brought to justice. . .

But I must be honest: this war has costs, and those, too, must be borne in my name. Coalition soldiers have given their lives for their countries, and I deeply grieve their loss. Innocent Iraqis have been killed or wounded, and every Iraqi casualty is a new tragedy in a country that has seen far more than its fair share. There is much work left to do, and there are dangerous days still ahead. That work, too, will be carried out in my name.

So, to my friends in the anti-war movement: you were right. None of what has transpired so far has done so in your name, and none of what transpires in Iraq in the future will do so in your name. Not in your name. In mine.

I'm thrilled -- though modest -- it's also in mine.

(via GOP Bloggers)

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Some gracious lefties.