The struggle to advance democracy in the Arab world

Democratic progress is slow. Promoting liberty and freedom may be more fruitful.

By John Hughes

from the May 16, 2007 edition

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Provo, Utah - When the Bush administration took the United States to war in Iraq, a primary motivation was to neutralize Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. They turned out not to exist.

But another ambition of the president was to spread democracy in the Middle East, which somehow seemed to have been bypassed in the global march to liberty during the past four decades. Iraq after Mr. Hussein was supposed to become a democratic touchstone for other Arab lands.

In a speech on the occasion of his second inauguration, President Bush declared, "There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment … and that is the force of human freedom." He pledged that the US would "seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

Mr. Bush was joined in this campaign by Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, who told his skeptical countrymen: "We are fighting for the inalienable right of humankind ... to be free.… It's a battle worth fighting." Politically they made an odd couple, the swashbuckling, conservative American president, and the low-keyed British Labourite premier. But they had a common belief that tyranny must be challenged and that liberty is the birthright of all men and women.

Now Mr. Blair has announced his departure from office June 27, and Bush is on the downward glide path that besets second-term presidents.

Where stands the drive for democracy in the Middle East at this moment in history?

Critics of Bush say Iraq is a sinkhole of despair and the campaign for democracy in the Arab world is a hopeless quest. There is something in the Arab psyche, they suggest, that renders democracy unattainable.

Supporters of the president argue that while Iraq is not moving politically with the dispatch that impatient Americans expect, it has held elections in which millions of Iraqis voted despite threats of reprisal by terrorists, it has developed a constitution, and it has formed a government.

The truth probably lies somewhere between these two extremes.

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