Rael Jean Isaac

Speaking at the Zionist Organization of America dinner in December, the Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick spoke of the government of Israel’s basing its policy, since Oslo, on fantasy rather than reality, i.e. the fantasy of a peace process rather than the reality of unrelenting Arab determination to destroy the state. While it may seem churlish, in the wake of the Iraqi elections, to question the viability of President Bush’s goal of making Iraq a liberal democracy (with freedom of speech, assembly, religion, equality of women, the rule of law, protection of minority rights), this too, given the realities of Iraq and the Middle East, is likely to prove a dangerous fantasy.

The ongoing violence in Iraq has not deterred the President from laying out ever more ambitious goals. In a December 12 speech he declared “the year 2005 will be recorded as a turning point in the history of Iraq, the history of the Middle East and the history of freedom.” Two days later, at the Woodrow Wilson Center, he declared that “freedom in Iraq will inspire reforms from Damascus to Tehran,” that we are witnessing “the birth of a free and sovereign Iraqi nation that will be a friend to the United States,” and “we will settle for nothing less than complete victory.”

The breadth of these goals has won the President enthusiastic support from neoconservatives. Norman Podhoretz, for example, describes the President’s plan to democratize the Middle East as “the great enterprise on which the United States has embarked in the Middle East” and says Commentary magazine “has enlisted in this great enterprise ‘for the duration’ taking a leading intellectual role in defense of its moral and political rightness.” To Podhoretz those not taking this view are “opponents of the war.”

But one does not need to be an opponent of the war to take issue with roseate views of the malleability of the Middle East. The President’s confidence rests on his belief, as he said in his Woodrow Wilson Center speech (and in many others) “that the people of the Middle East desire freedom as much as we do.” (Political correctness has tied itself into such knots that the notion that all cultures, no matter how much their values differ from our own, are equally valid is accompanied by the conviction that it is racist to claim all cultures do not have the same values we do.)

This writer counts herself among others who supported the war and continue to believe it was necessary. This is not merely because the President would have been derelict had he left Saddam Hussein in power, given the belief of the CIA -- and that of virtually all Western intelligence agencies -- that Saddam had assembled weapons of mass destruction. (He may indeed have had them; recently Moshe Yaalon, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom, has said that Saddam moved his chemical weapons to Syria six weeks before the war started.) Whether he did or not, there can be little doubt that Saddam, once he had shaken off the UN sanctions, would have quickly moved to reactivate his nuclear, chemical and biological warfare programs.

But from the beginning, the removal of Saddam’s regime was wrapped up in “the great enterprise” of transforming Iraq into a Western style democracy — and the rest of the Middle East by virtue of its moral example. And there’s the rub. The whole tenor of the Arab, and beyond that of the Muslim world, is in the opposite direction, toward making their societies more Islamic, rooted in sharia, more intolerant of modernity, of individual or minority rights, including those of Muslims of differing beliefs.

Since they emerged after World War II as independent states free of Western control, the countries of the Middle East have been casting about for some political recipe that will rescue them from their inferior position on the world stage and restore them to the preeminent one they feel should be theirs by virtue of their status (in their own minds) as heirs of the once militarily dominant Islamic empires and because of the superiority of Muslim religion and culture. The defeat of the combined Arab armies at the hands of the fledgling Jewish community of Palestine in 1948 was a catalyst in imparting a feeling of intense humiliation and determination to overcome it.

One supposed panacea has followed another. On December 9 the New York Times ran an article “The Boys of Baghdad College” describing how the three chief contestants in the Iraqi elections all went to the same elite Jesuit school. The personal trajectory of one of them, Adel Abdul Mahdi, sums up this hurtling from one “solution” to another. Mahdi began as a leader in the Baath Party, which was going to restore Arab glory though a pan-Arab secular nationalism that would wipe out the “artificial” barriers between Arab states; disappointed here, he shifted to Maoism; today he heads the largest Shiite religious party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), part of the dominant United Iraqi Alliance.

Democratic politics, with their messy compromises, are not satisfying to those searching for all embracing simple formulas.

“Islam is the solution” is increasingly the watchword of the Muslim Middle East. (It occurs to very few in the region that Islam is a large part of the problem.) Under these circumstances opening up Middle Eastern societies to free elections is likely to advance the Islamists to whom Western style democracy is anathema (although they don’t mind exploiting it to achieve power). In Egypt’s recent elections the officially outlawed Muslim Brotherhood won 20% of the vote. Eli Lake, in The New York Sun, criticizes the elections as “unfree” but had they been more free, the Brotherhood would have won an even larger share of Parliamentary seats. As it is, U.S. intelligence sources believe the effect will be to make Mubarak adapt his policy to the Islamist agenda, including an (even more) hostile attitude by official media toward the U.S. and Israel, a reduction of diplomatic and military ties with the U.S., an increase in the role of Islam in public life and growth of the already considerable Islamist influence within Egypt’s military and security forces.

Even more worrying, Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan is shaking off what to Islamists are the shackles of the secular civil society imposed by Kemal Ataturk. As Michael Rubin has pointed out in National Review Online, in June Erdogan addressed the nation not before the traditional backdrop of a Turkish flag and portrait of Ataturk but before a photo of Ataturk’s mausoleum and a mosque. The clear message: Ataturk is dead and Islam lives. Rubin chronicles Erdogan’s steady assault on the rule of law and secularism and the growth of (illegal) Pakistan style madrassas. The party’s daily paper calls internal voices raised against Erdogan’s abuses of power “enemies of Islam.” Not surprisingly, with this comes virulent anti-Americanism in the Turkish media.

The anti-Syrian demonstrations in Lebanon have been widely cited as proof of the power of Iraq’s democratic example, but in their wake Hezbollah has increased its presence in the Lebanese Parliament and executive. This Shi’a terrorist group seeks to create a fundamentalist state modeled on Iran to which it is closely tied. Policy analyst Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, recently testified before the House Subcommittee on Middle East and Central Asia that Hezbollah has increased its influence in Africa, South America and Europe and “according to some government estimates, the threat from Iran’s principal terrorist proxy now equals – or even exceeds – that of Al Qaeda.” (It certainly poses a greater threat to Israel.)

In local elections held by the Palestinian Authority on December 15, the Islamist terrorist group Hamas swept away the Fatah slates and, more significant, exit polls suggested that Hamas might well be victorious in the upcoming legislative elections. Experts believe it is likely to get a major boost from its inclusion of its first female candidate: she is Um Nidal, a celebrity among Palestinian Arabs because she sent three of her children to their deaths in anti-Israel suicide missions. She is filmed saying goodbye to her 17 year old son Mohammed (who went on to murder five Jewish students), ordering him “not to return except as a shahid (martyr).”

Everywhere the Islamist tide has produced greater intolerance, including escalating persecution of Christians. Thousands of Christians have fled the increasingly Islamized Palestinian Authority. In Egypt Christian Coptic communities have found themselves under siege, their members murdered as rumors of “disrespect” for Islam roil their Moslem neighbors. Copts are increasingly pushed out of the civil service and political life – indeed, during the recent elections the Brotherhood declared non-Moslems should be banned from leadership positions.

In a rare break with the political correctness that bans discussion of the topic, Archbishop Charles Chaput of the Denver diocese spoke of the extent of the problem of Moslem persecution of Christians – and the media’s failure to address it honestly. For example, he noted that news reports describe Indonesia’s violence as “sectarian,” as if Moslems and Christian extremists were equally at fault, when “the bloodshed is overwhelmingly provoked and carried out by Islamic militants…hundreds of thousands of persons have been displaced and thousands killed in this anti-Christian campaign of violence.”

In Bangladesh, Jihad Watch’s Hugh Fitzgerald points out “the country is spiraling into complete Muslim fanaticism.” The non-Muslim population is down to a mere 8% as non-Muslims, once 38% of the population, have left in the wake of massacres of Hindus, Buddhists and Christians.

The Bush administration ignores all this, acting as if casting ballots were all that democracy entailed. The President repeatedly avers his mantra that “democracies are peaceful.” But he may soon learn that in the Middle East, ballots and bullets go together.

And what about Iraq? The religious parties have trounced the secular parties, this even in Baghdad, supposedly the heart of a secular middle class. And while the elections were initially viewed as a great success because for the first time the Sunnis participated in large numbers, no sooner did interim numbers suggest they were vastly outvoted by Shiites than they refused to accept the results.

Moreover, the reason the Sunnis turned out to vote was in order to force major changes in the constitution that had been passed in the previous referendum. With the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (despite its dismal record of corruption and incompetence as the dominant party over the last nine months and its close ties to Iran) well in the lead and the Kurdish parties maintaining their strength, the Arab Sunnis are unlikely to achieve their aims. But if they do not, they are likely to decide that combining violence with political pressures will enhance the impact of the latter, especially with the U.S. desperate to stem the insurgency by “political” means.

Nor is the Sunni insurgency the only problem. Iraq is rife with ethnic tensions, religious rivalries, tribal loyalties, corruption and conflicts over identity (e.g. is the state to define itself as Arab despite its large Kurdish minority?) The army and police overflow with recruits who are also members of party-controlled militias, to which they give their primary loyalty.

Steven Vincent was a middle-aged art critic who watched the collapse of the Twin Towers from the nearby roof of his apartment building and determined to contribute to the war on terror. With extraordinary courage he went to Iraq on his own, living independently (no green zone for him) first in Baghdad, later in Basra. He wrote articles for a variety of magazines and newspapers and published a fine book Inside the Red Zone before his murder in Basra at the hands of one of those party militias. Basra is a success story from the U.S. standpoint, largely free of anti-coalition violence, a place where the British have “stood down,” retiring to the outskirts of the city, as the local army and police have “stood up.”

But, as Vincent reported, the once free-wheeling port city (60% Shia, 35% Sunni) is now like Florence under Savonarola, with religious gangs roaming the streets forcing women to cover their hair and ankles, firebombing liquor stores (most have been closed) as well as those selling Western music and DVDs. In a story published in the New York Times three days before his murder, Vincent reported that a young Iraqi officer told him that 75% of policemen in Basra were loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. (In an indiscretion that cost him his job, the chief of police several months earlier had reported to the British Guardian a figure of 50% loyal to the militias).

Vincent further reported that off duty police officers in the pay of religious militias went through the city in a white Toyota death car, and were responsible for the assassinations of hundreds of mostly former Baath Party members that took place in Basra each month. (It would be such a “death car,” according to witnesses, that kidnapped Vincent and his translator.) Vincent wrote that “Basra risks falling further under the sway of Islamic extremists and their Western trained police enforcers.” (Vincent’s account lends credibility to the charge by one of Iraq’s genuinely democratic politicians Mithal al-Alusi that his party officials, threatened by Shiite militiamen, were unable to function in the south.) Administration spokesmen have finally begun to acknowledge the problem is country-wide: everywhere militia members loyal to political parties undermine the viability of Iraq’s army and police as a neutral force protecting all citizens.

Nonetheless the President says in his most recent speech “this new Iraq shares our deepest values,” and Iraqis “are building a strong democracy…that will be a model for the Middle East.” Happy as such an outcome would be, the likelihood must be accounted extremely poor. That means we must face the prospect of something far less than the “total victory” which the President has promised lies ahead. Indeed, we may find that it is the decision of the Iraqi government, not domestic pressures, that forces our withdrawal sooner than the President would like.

If militant Islam, not liberal democracy, gathers strength in the Middle East (ironically, through the democratic process), the United States will have to change its goal from democracy-building to constraining Islam. Given how much the required steps go against our own liberal orthodoxies, it will take nothing short of an intellectual revolution to make this possible. These are a few of the PC-shattering steps that are required:

1) Change our immigration policy to a selective one that keeps Moslems out. The U.S. is fortunate in that unlike Europe, our Moslem minority is still relatively small. What is happening in France, Belgium, Holland, England, Germany and Sweden offers fair warning. If we do not take it seriously, we will pay a terrible price.

2) Embark on a crash program to develop alternative energy sources. This does not refer to pie-in-the-sky solar energy, but to readily available energy sources the religious fundamentalists who call themselves environmentalists hate and have successfully obstructed for decades: nuclear energy, offshore oil (much of it now off-limits to exploration), Alaska oil, to name a few. Drilling in ANWR, as George Will pointed out in a recent column, has been on the drawing boards since the early 1980s; its oil would almost equal our daily imports from Saudi Arabia.

3) Keep Wahhabi mosques out. While the U.S. does not have the huge unassimilable Moslem populations of some European countries, we cannot afford indoctrination of U.S. Moslems by Wahhabi imams courtesy of Saudi funds.

4) Warn Islamic countries of the consequences of embarking on or permitting from their soil attacks on the U.S. Our message: we are not going to occupy you or democratize you or build schools and infrastructure for you. We will punish you, devastatingly punish you.

Is it as improbable that these steps will be taken as that Iraq becomes the President’s vision of a democratic beacon to the region? That may well be. But then, like Israel, we will pay dearly for failing to do in time what can and should be done to protect ourselves, choosing instead to take refuge in comforting delusions.

Rael Jean Isaac is the Editor of OUTPOST