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September 11, 2002
The war for democracy
The Jerusalem Post Editorial
"Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. -- Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
On September 11, 2001, war was declared against the United States, and by extension, the Free World. Or more accurately, America joined a war launched against it by militant Islam, as Daniel Pipes argues on these pages, as early as the capture of the American Embassy in Teheran in 1979.
Many have drawn the analogy to Pearl Harbor, another attack that surprised America one clear day and forced the US to go to war. That war, too, had its transformative effects. But it is perhaps Lincoln's words summing up the Civil War that best touch on the nature of this conflict: one much broader than its protagonists expected, with ramifications even greater still.
What Lincoln was alluding to was not just the abolition of slavery, but that the Civil War transformed the US from an "are" to "is" a single nation rather than a fractious federation of states. The current war is essentially one to transform the world from one in which freedom and democracy are the province of the lucky few to a world in which the concept of universal rights finally comes into its own.
Like the Union then, the US now may well be looking for "an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding." But President George W. Bush's June 24 speech on Palestinian democracy lays the intellectual groundwork for nothing less.
At this one-year mark, America can chalk up two fundamental accomplishments in the war so far: the liberation of Afghanistan and the breaking of the taboo that stability trumps democracy where the Arab world is concerned.
Bush's fundamental case on Iraq is that America's uncharacteristic worship of the false god of stability brought the ultimate instability: September 11. The Arab world, left to fester in its own despotism, was an unstable mixture that blew up in America's face.
Bush learned from this what America already knew but did not want to admit to itself: The only guarantor of true international stability and peace is some form of democracy, however imperfect. He is right, and the only real question now is whether America will look for an "easier triumph," or pursue its vision to its logical conclusion.
Yesterday Bush spoke at the Afghan Embassy in Washington, partly to quell talk that the US is not paying enough attention to winning the peace in Afghanistan, and partly to emphasize that there is a Muslim country that loves America and that America loves. Bush called Afghanistan an "emerging democracy." Despite the recent assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai and despite the fact that the US may not be supporting democracy as deftly as it dispatched the dictatorship, Bush's characterization is a fair one.
The birth pangs of Afghan democracy do not negate the great deed of Afghanistan's liberation. Similarly, nurturing a democratic order in post-Saddam Iraq, or in a post-Arafat Palestinian Authority may not be easy or smooth. But where is it written that the best form of government is also the easiest one?
In an interview with this newspaper in April, eminent historian Bernard Lewis cautioned that "democracy is dangerous anywhere... We talk sometimes as if democracy were the natural human condition, as if any deviation from it is a crime to be punished or a disease to be cured. That is not true."
At the same time, Lewis's caution about democracy did not mean he advocated an alternative. Even in the Arab world, Lewis clearly saw the possibilities, provided one had "a realistic approach without illusions and saw democracy in terms of a gradual maturing that is possible, and has been done in many places."
One thing can be said about the challenge of promoting democracy; It is much preferable to the challenge of containing rogue dictatorships. This is the fundamental lesson that America has and should have drawn from September 11.
It is the reason why removing Saddam is nearer to the beginning than to the end of this war. And it is the reason that this war should ultimately be seen as one for democracy even more than it is against terrorism, which is after all but a tool of the dictators who live by it. The World
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