Recall the seemingly absurd rationale (among others) given by president George W. Bush for invading Iraq: to bring freedom and democracy to the Arab Middle East. Satirists had a field day, while the bulk of the West’s intellectual and political classes mocked George junior with no respite. American idealism had obviously run amok, and dangerously so. What right did we have to impose our precocious belief in the superiority and power of freedom? Why did we think it possible to forcefully implant a complex Western idea into the dry infertile authoritarian soil of the Middle East, a region that had never known democracy nor had ever requested it?
Yet George W. Bush had faith in self-government, just as our founding fathers did when they established our institutions, just as Ronald Reagan did when he called for the destruction of the Berlin Wall. George, the naïve dummy, saw the self-evident and inalienable truths that more worldly and pragmatic men missed. The force and power of the democratic idea was uncorked with the deposing of Saddam Hussein, and now that the genie of liberty has been freed, Tunisia, Egypt and most of the Middle East are irrevocably changed.
Democracy and freedom has become a potent and virulent force amongst the Muslim people. Bush understood the power of these ideas and the fact that no group, minority or majority, would ultimately be impervious to their seductions. He understood that the desire for freedom is a commonality among all men and women, far more innate and far more powerful than all the differences. And so he spoke out forcefully for democracy, not just with with his words but also with the most robust and well funded set of democracy promotion policies in this country’s recent history.
And while we mocked George Bush and laughed at his stumbling, his boorishness, his lack of sophistication, we now cheer the fruits of his faith. Democracy and yearning for liberty did indeed take root between the Tigris and the Euphrates, against all odds, however imperfectly, and it has now flowered in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Iran.
To be sure, we in the West continue to ignore this elephant in the room, preferring to leave unchallenged the conventional wisdom that Bush was a moron and a goon. Yet on the ground, among the reformers themselves, the facts are harder to hide. To wit, this quote from the renowned Egyptian liberal Saad Eddin Ibrahim:
“Dislikable as [President Bush] may have been to many liberals, including my own wife, we have to give him credit,” says Mr. Ibrahim. “He started a process of some conditionality with American aid and American foreign policy which opened some doors and ultimately was one of the building blocks for what’s happening now.” That conditionality extended to Mr. Ibrahim: In 2002, the Bush administration successfully threatened to withhold $130 million in aid from Egypt if Mr. Mubarak didn’t release him.
A Democrat’s Triumphal Return to Cairo (Interview with Saad Eddin Ibrahim)
Note: Here follows Alan Dershowitz’ interesting synopsis
