Posted by
Kevin W. Massengill on Monday, September 15, 2008 4:18:32 PM
Despite a flurry of poorly argued responses, I thought D'Souza wrote an excellent essay describing the book, "Who Speaks for Islam?". Having studied, lived and worked in the Middle East for years, I concur with the authors’ finding that Muslims generally hold conservative values not dissimilar to conservative Jews and Christians.
I too have heard the widespread frustration among Muslims that the US sacrifices its fundamental values to support oppressive regimes. An argument well made by Ralph Peters in his essay in the US War College journal Parameters, "Stability: Our Enemy".
I also found interesting his likening their values to those in America in the 1950s. My wife and I raised our two children here during their middle and high school years and I have often described life in the United Arab Emirates as similar to 1950’s America. The UAE Minister of Foreign Trade, Sheikha Lubna, ascribes the success of the UAE to the fact that they are the country in the Middle East that best offers the “American Dream” in the minds of investors…a place of opportunity, safety and rule of law.
However, I would dispute D’Souza’s assumption that “choosing their own leaders” will necessarily lead to a stable or friendly regime in Iraq with rule of law and property rights. A point he reinforces with his comment that only Iraq elects its leaders in the Muslim Middle East.
D'Souza is making an assumption common in our times...that democratically elected leaders are the only route to good governance, legitimacy, rule of law and property rights. While commonly held today, the American founders would have recoiled at the idea. They knew from history that democracies more typically lead “…to anarchy and mob rule”. They greatly feared democratic governments recognizing that governments with no restraints beyond the will of the majority can tyrannize individuals as viciously as any despot. The founders deliberately tried to provide the safeguards of a republic to protect us from "the passions of the mob".
Given the concerns of the founders it is ironic that we have adopted the word democracy to mean good government when both Hitler and Hamas came to power in elections…and democracy in Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Gaza and many other places has led to unmitigated disaster.
Since no one can think beyond their own vocabulary, it is important that we use our words accurately. What D’Souza and all men of good will seek, and what peace and justice demand, is not democracy per se but good governance. Regardless of whether it is “rule by the one, rule by the few or rule by the many”, good governance exists wherever the ruler(s) exercise limited power for the good of all. This limited use of power for the good of all has from antiquity distinguished the good forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy and republic from the bad: tyranny, oligarchy and democracy which rule for the good of themselves or for "the poor".
This is not just semantics. By using the word democracy as an intellectual placeholder for what we really want, we find ourselves in the awkward position of pressuring good governments for failing to offer elections and then looking hypocritical when we resist the emergence of freely elected bad governments like Hamas. It would greatly help US policy in the region if our leadership recognized that we should simply champion good governance, rule of law and property rights...and not the happy fiction that democratically elected leaders are the best or only way to provide these things.
Returning to Iraq, rather than highlight the fact that only Israel and Iraq elects its leaders in the Middle East, implying that only their citizens will enjoy good and stable government, D'Souza would be more accurate to say that the Iraqi people now have the opportunity to elect leaders…who may or may not rule for the good of all. Only time will tell which they choose.
I wish the long suffering people of Iraq well but it may be insightful to compare in 10 years the progress of Iraq’s elected government with the Middle East monarchy of Jordan's King Abdullah or the Al Nahyan aristocracy in the UAE or the Republic of Turkey to see which government is best providing its citizens with “the American Dream of opportunity, safety and rule of law”.