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Historically, the moral record of consensual government is sometimes less than perfect. Democratic Athens butchered the neutral Melians. The great expansion of Roman imperialism was the work of republican government. American chattel slavery functioned for nearly a century right alongside national elections. Yet that being said, democracy at least is evolutionary. Its ultimate logic is equality, allowing for a framework of development and change — as citizens constantly seek to match their own maturing notions of freedom with their government's constitutional commitment to fairness. Democracy, more effectively than other forms of government, also seeks to alleviate the inherent sins of mankind, rather than to ignore or even enhance them. But it is a topic sorely ignored by our own government, media, universities, and public at large in the present crisis. Yet the issue lies at the heart of our war with Iraq, unease with allies like the Saudis, bafflement at demonstrations in Cairo, and overwhelming support for Israel. We must remember that democratic revolution — that transformed the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe from enemies to friends in months, and convulsed much of Asia and South America — has never made any inroads in the Middle East. The Gulf States are benign monarchies at best. Syria, Libya, and Iraq are fascist dictatorships. Jordan, Egypt, Palestine and most of the northern African states are under the control of a single leader or family without any real legitimate political opposition. Israel alone is truly free — and seems to get along best with Turkey, which alone of the Islamic states has a secular government that has made great strides in creating a free society. Western-educated Palestinians are now ubiquitous in the United States lecturing Americans on television and radio about the immorality of our current foreign policy. Many are astute and loquacious — if at times prone to filibustering until their microphones are silenced by exasperated hosts. Yet in response, no one asks them why in their apparent eagerness for, and familiarity with, the American democratic process, their fervor for candor is not equally on display on their own home shores. Why have there not been real elections the last several years in Palestine? Why are we told that there is not a single oppositional leader to Mr. Arafat — in the way there are none to Mr. Assad, Mr. Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, and the Gulf State monarchs? Why is the media there censored and journalists often jailed for expressing views not in accordance with Mr. Arafat's party line? Why do not investigative Palestinian journalists print stories about the financial irregularities endemic among the Palestinian authority? Apparently democracy and freedom are words that cannot be spoken — out of politeness by us or embarrassment by them. Yet such reciprocity is critical for reasons other than avoiding hypocrisy. Critics, intellectuals, journalists, and diplomats from the Middle East, who operate in a closed society in which their own views cannot be aired without prior sanction of the government, become habituated to such protocols. And so when they pose as Western journalists and intellectuals abroad they can hardly be expected to metamorphose suddenly into either accurate or fair emissaries of the truth. They know well that — while their criticism of America or Israel on Fox or CNN will play well on the West Bank — any slight slip that suggests the terrorist murderers are not martyrs can get them in big trouble when it is inevitably reported in the state-run newspapers in the Arab world. Thus we have this present Orwellian situation in which vocal spokesmen for the Palestinian authority, Egypt, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia banter and bask in the free American media — but, of course, would never allow such frank exchange back at home. Should American journalists travel to the Middle East and try to engage in uncensored discussion on television of the type Arabs so obviously enjoy in the United States, they would be ignored, threatened — or dubbed a Jew and someone unaware of the "Jewish" conspiracy. Ask Geraldo, Ashleigh Banfield, or Barbara Walters, whose recent interviews with Middle Eastern journalists, politicos, and students have all revealed crude, knee-jerk anti-Semitism rather than the hoped for tolerance. We hear frequently about "Mr. Sharon's war." But, in fact, he is an elected leader who deals with an opposition — among them Arab Israelis and an often-hostile press. He enjoys power solely because a majority of Israelis presently support him. But when and if they choose not to, he will be replaced. The same is not true of Mr. Arafat or his authority. There is an asymmetrical war going on in the Middle East; yet it is not merely military, but political and cultural as well: The Israelis elect their leaders, audit their behavior, tolerate active political opposition, and suffer calumny in their press. The Palestinians do not — well before the start of the intifada. And yet all this is left unsaid. By the same token, we are told that the Arab League's new consensus reflects a breakthrough in their purported recognition 50 years after the foundation of Israel to recognize the existence of the Jewish state. But there was not a single true democracy present at the summit. And while it is both important and fair to distinguish degrees of autocracy — opposition to the king in Jordan might draw a fine, while similar independence a bullet in Iraq or Syria — the truth is that the Arabs only practice democracy when as autocracies they decide to vote among themselves. They would never allow an Assad or Mubarak simply to establish by fiat the Arab party line. How strange is this democratic virus that infects even strongmen when they meet among themselves! Middle Easterners admonish us to pay heed to U.N. resolutions of the General Assembly. Put aside the obvious embarrassment that the voting process they won't honor in their own countries they apparently respect in other venues — and just ask, how many of such countries in the General Assembly are true democracies and free societies? Thus many Americans are puzzled about why we are to pay heed to these motions and resolutions when we know such majority votes represent the policies and the will of dictators and a tiny elite rather than true majorities. We talk of terrorism and wonder whether it works in the long run, leaving the question of democracy entirely out of the equation. But quite simply, terrorism fails utterly when state and non-state autocrats like those in Japan, the IRA, and Palestine have used kamikazes, terrorist bombers, or suicide murderers against democracies. Ultimately, we know that Mr. Sharon's stern policies are ratified by majority vote — but who voted for Hamas or Islamic Jihad? Should a renegade Jewish group initiate such terror, the Israeli government would immediately have to control it — or face public investigation and a loss of legitimacy. Similarly, some Israelis march against Sharon's policies and organize both passive and active civilian resistance. To do the equivalent in Palestine — rallying in a demonstration to condemn Hamas or Mr. Arafat himself — earns someone a bullet or a noose. Israelis who march into the West Bank to protect Mr. Arafat find scorn from their citizens; the unproven accusation of sympathizing with the Israeli wins Palestinians summarily execution — bound and tied before being shot without a trial. Realists, of course, would only shake their heads at all this. They sigh that should democracies sprout up in the Middle East, the situation would only worsen, given the furor of the Arab street. They believe that we would only see something like the reign of terror in Iran — as Hitler-like fundamentalists or autocrats like Arafat captured one election, then dismantled democracy. Perhaps. But at least we could say that we are not involved in subsidizing the machinery of autocracy, if only indirectly. Moreover, what the irresponsible Arab mob does in the street may not be the same when it is asked to conduct campaigns and take the reins to vote for its own leaders, whose policies for good or evil become its own problem. We should note that governments that hate us, and over whom we have no authority — Iraq and Iran — may well have restless populations that are at least as friendly to us as are those under our erstwhile friendly monarchies and dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Being hated by autocrats is not a bad thing. Such a consistent support for democracy is valuable in other ways as well. It reminds our Arab friends that support for Israel is not based on the influence of Zionists in America or the Christian fundamentalists' interpretations of biblical prophecies, but rather derives from a shared commitment to open and periodic elections, a free press, and an independent court system. Thus any country in the Middle East that chooses to adopt such a system would naturally find the same sort of affinity with the United States that Israel now enjoys. Should the Palestinians immediately hold free and periodic elections, televise raucous debates of a truly independent Parliament, allow an open press and court system, send their reporters into Israel to learn of the other side's view, and begin nonviolent resistance to the presence of Israeli troops, they would accomplish more in 3 months than they have in 35 years. But then it might turn out that a free Palestine's biggest enemy would not be Israel — but governments like Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, who could not stomach such dangerous democrats right on their borders and who themselves would no longer have a convenient scapegoat to help vent their own unfree people's growing frustrations.
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emocracy is not perfect.
An entire corpus of classical literature — from the Old Oligarch
and Aristophanes to Plato and Aristotle — catalogues its absurdities
and inconsistencies. George Bernard Shaw once remarked, "Democracy
substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt
few." The Left has always wished it to be "stronger" in
transcending politics to ensure material equality. The Right seeks from
it pure liberty — and the freedom for citizens to do what they wish
without too much government oversight.
