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February 10, 2012
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Julie Deardorff : Researchers say antioxidants may not be that effective and could do more harm than good
Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
February 3, 2012
Edmund Sanders : Israeli official says Iran is creating missile that could reach East Coast of US
Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
January 31, 2012
January 30, 2012
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
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Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
Jeannine Stein: An inflated ego and thinking you're 'all that' doesn't just make others sick of you, it can make you ill
Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
Ed Koch: To the New York Times, calling for the murder of Jews by those capable of having their incitement taken seriously isn't news
Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
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Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
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January 17, 2012
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January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
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John Fauber : Statins found to raise diabetes risk in postmenopausal women
Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
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January 11, 2012
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Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
Jan. 27, 2005
/ 17 Shevat, 5765
The hard road to democracy
By
Victor Davis Hanson
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Fostering elections in Iraq is a hard road, well apart from the daily violence of the Sunni Triangle. The autocratic Sunni elite of surrounding countries prefers democracy to fail, warning us that an Iranian-sponsored theocracy will surely follow in Iraq, legitimizing a new Arab Khomeinism.
Sunni Iraqis want exemption from, or a delay of, the election even though they cannot or will not stop their own violence that imperils it. The United States earns very little credit abroad for its newfound dedication to democratic reform even as realists at home warn that we should instead back the status-quo who better guarantee order that purportedly favors our own national security.
There are rarely supporters of the hard road of promoting democracies abroad until they are well established. We learned that well enough both before and after the Afghanistan war. Many swore that the Taliban could not be removed. After their demise, new critics warned that the fascists could not be replaced with democrats and now suddenly they are mostly silent or indeed supportive of the new Afghanistan.
In the face of censure, the United States once bombed Christian Europeans in the Balkans to arrest an Islamic genocide, in hopes of stopping Milosevic and ushering in a democracy. Greeks and Russians were furious. The Arab world offered little thanks that we saved their fellow Muslims. Europeans who had watched the carnage on their doorstep for a near decade whined about our heavy-handed bombing. But perseverance in pursuit of principle perhaps the Clinton administration's most controversial hour saved thousands of lives and gave the Balkans a chance at consensual government.
America's calls for fair elections in the Ukraine only alienated a far more powerful Russia. The Putin administration remonstrated that Russia is the world's largest oil producer and a similar victim of mass terrorism and thus an ally in our war. Yet the Ukraine now has a fairly elected leader and we proved that America is not anti- Russian, but rather pro-democratic.
We are at last pressing Saudi Arabia for internal reform in the knowledge that their monarchy is a fertile ground for religious fascists who manipulate understandable popular discontent against the monarchy for their own Islamic agendas. These efforts at promoting Western-style democracy are either slurred as cultural chauvinism against Arabs or dismissed as criminally naive idealism that will ensure a far worse anti-American theocracy supposedly a lose/lose proposition.
Yet a day will come when it is recognized that the American withdrawal of 10,000 troops from the Wahhabi state was a wise move and should be followed by sober reassessment of American subsidies to the Mubarak dynasty in Egypt that is heading toward to a crisis of succession.
America was castigated for isolating Yasser Arafat. However, this ostracism ensured at Arafat's passing that he was not a messianic figure, but generally felt to have been an obstacle to open elections that are moving ahead. So the United States was attacked for shunning a dictatorial nationalist, but never thanked for opposing the corruption and authoritarianism that had ruined the Palestinian state.
In all these cases, the preference for the status quo offers short-term stability, while the principled insistence on consensual government proves risky and hinges on unproven reformers. Yet in the long-term, America has rarely gone wrong for being on the democratic side of history. Japanese today are not angry with us because decades ago we insisted that women vote there. Nor are Germans furious that we opposed Soviet expansion through an elected rather than a puppet Bonn government.
The war-torn Europeans understandably bristle at the option of using force for democratic change, but if Nicaraguans, Panamanians, Bosnians, Kosovars, Afghans and Iraqis had counted only on the EU's much vaunted utopian soft power, then they would be still under dictators. If in World War II Americans had acted as the present-day European Union does now, there would probably be no European Union today.
Most Americans rightly lament past Cold War support for strongmen with little acknowledgement that thousands of Soviet missiles pointing at the United States once narrowed the parameters of principled action. Moreover, if it was mistaken once to support autocrats, then it is surely right now to rectify, rather than abdicate from, that wrong.
The world after September 11 has reminded us of three other lessons as well. Democracies rarely attack each other and thus the greater the number of them, the less likely is war itself. Citizens vent better through ballots than bullets. And freedom is innate to all born into this world rather than the sole domain of the West.
If the past is any guide to the future, that hard road to democracy in the Middle East will create as much immediate chaos and caricature of President Bush's new idealism as it does enduring stability and eventual praise but only long after he is gone.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading."
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Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and military historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Comment by clicking here.
01/20/05: Illegal immigration is a moral issue
01/13/05: Islamicists hate us for who we are, not what we do
01/06/05: Pledging blood and treasure for popular reform in a death struggle with Islamic fascism
© 2005,
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