In recent
years, several supporters of the war in Iraq have changed their tune. One is neoconservative
John Agresto. In 2003, he put his words into action when he went to work for
the Pentagon as the senior adviser to Iraq’s Higher Education Ministry. He
would then go on to help found the American University of Iraq in Kurdistan. In
2007, he wrote Mugged By Reality: The
Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions where he aired some
of his misgivings about how the United States handled Iraq. Then in December
2012, he authored an article for Commentary
magazine, “Was Promoting Democracy a Mistake?” It dealt with
democratization as a philosophical matter, not the nuts and bolts of what the
Bush administration did right or wrong in Iraq. Agresto came to the conclusion
that Muslim culture is a major impediment to the creation of free and
democratic societies not only in Iraq, but the Middle East in general. This is
an argument that has been made before, and overlooks the changes that have
happened in democratic theory over the last several decades. That means while
Iraq may look grim today, it still has many possibilities for its future.
The
neoconservative movement in the United States started in the 1930s as a
rejection of leftist thought. Then, a group of socialist and communist intellectuals became disillusioned with those ideologies, because of Joseph
Stalin’s brutal dictatorship in the Soviet Union. They took a turn to the
right as a result, and supported World War II as a struggle against fascism and
the Cold War as a fight against communism. Eventually, they forged a platform for U.S. foreign policy that opposed the two major belief systems prevalent in the country, realism and idealism. The former believes that countries should
follow their national interests, while the latter holds that international
bodies like the United Nations and international law can help bring about a
sense of order in the world. Neoconservatives came to promote four major
ideas as alternatives. One was that the internal politics of countries matter,
because they can determine their actions on the international scene. Two was
the need to promote America’s morals, namely democracy and human rights around
the world, because those beliefs make wars less likely. Three neoconservatives
distrusted international law and organizations to solve anything. Four they
believed that social engineering in other countries does not work. These beliefs were synthesized into a 1996 Foreign Affairs article “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy” and a 2000 book Present Dangers both by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. Those two authors called for “benevolent hegemony” where
America would promote democracy around the world and deter its opponents
through overwhelming military force. By the 1990s, many neoconservatives also
shared a belief that Iraq was a country that needed to be dealt with. While
there are many that have argued that neoconservatives were the main reason why
the United States invaded in 2003, that role has been overblown. There were
plenty of members of the Bush administration, namely the president himself that
were not neoconservatives, but were equally troubled by Saddam Hussein. Still,
many in the White House came to believe in the neoconservative belief that the
U.S. could create a democracy in Iraq, and that could help transform the entire
Middle East.
John Agresto
came from that school of thought. He believed that freedom and democracy were
natural rights, and that democratic nations were less likely to wage war. Out
of these beliefs, flowed the idea that establishing a democracy in Iraq would
therefore be relatively easy, because Iraqis would want freedom more than most
after years of brutal dictatorship, and that would help change the whole Middle
East. Iraq did take steps towards becoming a democratic society with three
elections in 2005, and a new constitution that same year. The problem for
Agresto was that Iraq has not developed into the peaceful and free society that
democracy is supposed to foster since then.
Agresto tried
to explain this anomaly by arguing that not all democracies are alike. Some are
good and some are bad. He used the examples of the American versus the French
Revolutions. One led to a peaceful transition once the British were thrown out,
while the other led to bloody purges and executions once the French monarchy
was deposed. Agresto wrote that Americans overlook these differences through
ahistorical thinking. They tend to believe that the world works and acts like
the United States. It ignores messy affairs like the French Revolution, and
universalizes the American experience. As a result, the U.S. often fails to
understand how hard it is to create a democracy in another country, which was
what Agresto and others were guilty of with regards to Iraq.
Agresto then
looked at the example of the Middle East, which he argued was not open to
democratic principles due to its culture. There, some people wanted to be
religious rather than free. Some wanted safety rather than freedom. Some wanted
strong leadership rather than liberty. The issue of freedom is not just about
the individual, but whether they also believe in freedom for others as well. In
the Middle East, women, secularists, and Christians are discriminated against,
which to Agresto meant they did not believe in minority rights. He postulated
that while everyone deserves freedom that doesn’t mean everyone wants it. To
him, that was especially true in the Middle East, and places like Iraq. In that
part of the world, elections could bring about governments that oppressed
others. Countries going through transitions like Iraq, and those that went
through the Arab Spring also have deep fissures between the old regime, the
military, secularists, liberals, and religious and tribal groups. The
competition between them could bring instability and repression, and even give
rise to the return of autocrats.
There were
three major problems with Agresto’s article. First, neoconservatives like him
ignored part of their own ideology when advocating the transformation of Iraq.
Francis Fukuyama, a former neoconservative himself, pointed out that while
neoconservatives want to promote democracy in other countries, that ran counter
to their beliefs that social engineering does not work. Neoconservatives don’t seem
to understand that problem. They think freedom and democracy are universal
wants, therefore all that needs to be done is for the U.S. to throw off the
yoke of oppression, and people would naturally move towards a democratic
system. Agresto at least figured out that making a democracy actually takes a
lot of time and work, and was not easy like he originally thought. Second, Agresto’s
belief that Muslim culture runs counter to democratic ideas was ironically an
argument made by some for why the United States should have invaded Iraq in the
first place. Middle East scholars such as Bernard Lewis of Princeton and Fouad
Ajami of John Hopkins hypothesized that the Arab world was a backward one full
of dictatorships, repression, and extremists. The U.S. therefore needed to step
in to drag that part of the world into the modern era, and that could be
achieved by deposing Saddam Hussein. What people see as the problems with Arab
culture therefore can be used in many different ways, not just to say that the
area is stagnant politically, and is thus immune to change. Finally, Agresto
has not kept up with theories about democracy. It was not that long ago that
political scientists thought that only countries that were like the United States or Western Europe with large middle classes, market economies, etc. could become democracies. There used to be those that argued that culture
and religion like in Catholic countries with their reverence for the
hierarchical church were not open to democratic ways. That all changed in the
1980s-1990s when large swaths of the globe became democracies. Agresto wrote
that the Middle East could change, but through his writing basically said that
the door was closed. If Catholic nations, African countries, and others could transform
their systems, and become democracies, why couldn’t the Arab world? Agresto,
overlooked part of his own ideology, the arguments of his fellow war
supporters, and how the world and democratic theory has changed over the last
few decades.
Iraq is a deeply
divided country that still suffers from violence. It has been called a
semi-democracy where it has regular elections, political parties, and a variety
of media outlets, but at the same time has weak rule of law, corruption, and
ignores human rights. Agresto looked at that nation, and decided that the
attempt to build a free and liberal society there was mistaken, and that it was
the Muslim culture of the region that was the culprit. The future of Iraq has
not yet been determined however. Its society can struggle for years before its
new ruling elite decides which direction it ultimately wants to go. They could
eventually come to some grand compromises that will open the door to further
participation and greater democratization. They could also decide to turn
towards autocracy if they believe that is what’s necessary to overcome all the
country’s problems. The point is there are still many paths Iraq can follow.
Ultimately, it will be Iraqis who make that history, not Americans who believe
that things did not go their way and want to write off the country and region as
a result.
SOURCES
Agresto, John, “Was Promoting Democracy a Mistake?”
Commentary, December 2012
Diamond, Larry, Squandered
Victory, The American Occupation And The Bungled Effort To Bring Democracy To
Iraq, New York: Times Books, 2005
Fukuyama, Francis, America
at the Crossroads, Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, Yale
University Press: New Haven and London, 2006
Packer,
George, The Assassin’s Gate, American in
Iraq; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005
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