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bignate
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
Location: Hell's Ditch
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 Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 4:52 pm Post subject: Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread? |
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Though, I don't always agree with some of his ideas, I really enjoy reading Ignatieff, and I felt some of you may (or may not) as well. Though he is often critical of the Bush administration, he also gives them the benefit of a doubt and was one of very few liberals who supported intervention in Iraq (one of his stances I disagree with along with is ideas surrounding interrogation in war time)...
Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?
Michael Ignatieff
The New York Times Magazine
June 26, 2005
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| It's impossible to untangle the contradictions of American freedom without thinking about Jefferson and the spiritual abyss that separates his pronouncement that ''all men are created equal'' from the reality of the human beings he owned, slept with and never imagined as fellow citizens. American freedom aspires to be universal, but it has always been exceptional because America is the only modern democratic experiment that began in slavery. From the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it took a century for the promise of American freedom to even begin to be kept. |
I look at this statement as being a core issue to the problems of the War on Terror in its present scope and direction. To force another culture, to accept a form of government or ideology in place of their own - seems a bit of a paradox to me.
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Until George W. Bush, no American president -- not even Franklin Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson -- actually risked his presidency on the premise that Jefferson might be right. But this gambler from Texas has bet his place in history on the proposition, as he stated in a speech in March, that decades of American presidents' ''excusing and accommodating tyranny, in the pursuit of stability'' in the Middle East inflamed the hatred of the fanatics who piloted the planes into the twin towers on Sept. 11.
If democracy plants itself in Iraq and spreads throughout the Middle East, Bush will be remembered as a plain-speaking visionary. If Iraq fails, it will be his Vietnam, and nothing else will matter much about his time in office. For any president, it must be daunting to know already that his reputation depends on what Jefferson once called ''so inscrutable [an] arrangement of causes and consequences in this world.''
The consequences are more likely to be positive if the president begins to show some concern about the gap between his words and his administration's performance. For he runs an administration with the least care for consistency between what it says and does of any administration in modern times. The real money committed to the promotion of democracy in the Middle East is trifling. The president may have doubled the National Endowment for Democracy's budget, but it is still only $80 million a year. But even if there were more money, there is such doubt in the Middle East that the president actually means what he says -- in the wake of 60 years of American presidents cozying up to tyrants in the region -- that every dollar spent on democracy in the Middle East runs the risk of undermining the cause it supports. Actual Arab democrats recoil from the embrace of American good intentions. Just ask a community-affairs officer trying to give American dollars away for the promotion of democracy in Mosul, in northern Iraq, how easy it is to get anyone to even take the money, let alone spend it honestly.
And then there are the prisoners, the hooded man with the wires hanging from his body, the universal icon of the gap between the ideals of American freedom and the sordid -- and criminal -- realities of American detention and interrogation practice. The fetid example of these abuses makes American talk of democracy sound hollow. It will not be possible to encourage the rule of law in Egypt if America is sending Hosni Mubarak shackled prisoners to torture. It will be impossible to secure democratic change in Morocco or Afghanistan or anywhere else if Muslims believe that American guards desecrated the Koran. The failure to convict anybody higher than a sergeant for these crimes leaves many Americans and a lot of the world wondering whether Jefferson's vision of America hasn't degenerated into an ideology of self-congratulation, whose function is no longer to inspire but to lie. |
The fact that the contradiction in what this administration says and what it actually does does not, and should not escape anyone. To those who would defend this under the premise of a nation under the conditions of war, fine, then do not lie about it - state it plainly - we are fighting to spread an ideology that we feel is better - not that we are fighting to spread freedom - because that is not the case. War is not peace, no matter how one looks at it.
| Quote: |
It is terrorism that has joined together the freedom of strangers and the national interest of the United States. But not everyone believes that democracy in the Middle East will actually make America safer, even in the medium term. Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, for one, has questioned the ''facile assumption that a straight line exists between progress on democratization and the elimination of the roots of Islamic terrorism.'' In the short term, democratization in Egypt, for example, might only bring the radical Muslim Brotherhood to power. Even in the medium term, becoming a democracy does not immunize a society from terrorism. Just look at democratic Spain, menaced by Basque terrorism.
Moreover, proclaiming freedom to be God's plan for mankind, as the president has done, does not make it so. There is, as yet, no evidence of a sweeping tide of freedom and democracy through the Middle East. Lebanon could pitch from Syrian occupation into civil strife; Egypt might well re-elect Mubarak after a fraudulent exercise in pseudodemocracy; little Jordan hopes nobody will notice that government remains the family monopoly of the Hashemite dynasty; Tunisia remains a good place for tourists but a lousy place for democrats; democratic hopes are most alive in Palestine, but here the bullet is still competing with the ballot box. Over it all hangs Iraq, poised between democratic transition and anarchy.
And yet . . . and yet. . . . More than one world leader has been heard to ask his advisers recently, ''What if Bush is right?'' |
Ignatieff makes an interesting and somewhat contradictory turn here, though there are many what ifs, involved, there is no way to comprehend, nor predict the outcome of the actions taken by the US at this time. Outside of the rhetoric of both pro and con Bush camps, there is no solid evidence as of yet to determine whether democracy as a forced ideology will make a better Middle East. However what is sure, is that traditional allies and freinds of the US are not so sure about the means and methods of the Bush administration to say the least. In fact it is often held in disdain and with a definite contempt as all of us know.
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| The deafening silence extends beyond Germany. Like Germany, Canada sat out the war in Iraq. Ask the Canadians why they aren't joining the American crusade to spread democracy, and you get this from their government's recent foreign-policy review: ''Canadians hold their values dear, but are not keen to see them imposed on others. This is not the Canadian way.'' One reason it is not the Canadian way is that when American presidents speak of liberty as God's plan for mankind, even God-fearing Canadians wonder when God began disclosing his plan to presidents. |
This is often the difference between the United States and other democracies - we hold similar (but not identical) ideals and values to be dear to us. However, in the end who is deciding what these ideals are and how they should be indoctrinated. It is the US who have decided what these values are and how they should be forced upon other cultures, regardless of what those cultures feel.
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The charge that promoting democracy is imperialism by another name is baffling to many Americans. How can it be imperialist to help people throw off the shackles of tyranny?
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The problem here is that while no one wants imperialism to win, no one in his right mind can want liberty to fail either. If the American project of encouraging freedom fails, there may be no one else available with the resourcefulness and energy, even the self-deception, necessary for the task. Very few countries can achieve and maintain freedom without outside help. Big imperial allies are often necessary to the establishment of liberty. As the Harvard ethicist Arthur Applbaum likes to put it, ''All foundings are forced.'' Just remember how much America itself needed the assistance of France to free itself of the British. Who else is available to sponsor liberty in the Middle East but America? Certainly the Europeans themselves have not done a very distinguished job defending freedom close to home. |
Another conundrum that has formed out of this - how can one consider spreading of freedom to be bad? Perhaps it is not that freedom is bad - no one can fully support that stance, however the methods and the progression of this freedom and how it is forced upon cultures that are described tacitly by Washington as backwards or even barbaric, that is proving to be so problematic in the discussion of this issue.
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While Americans characteristically oversell and exaggerate the world's desire to live as they do, it is actually reasonable to suppose, as Americans believe, that most human beings, if given the chance, would like to rule themselves. It is not imperialistic to believe this. It might even be condescending to believe anything else.
If Europeans are embarrassed to admit this universal yearning or to assist it, Americans have difficulty understanding that there are many different forms that this yearning can take, Islamic democracy among them. Democracy may be a universal value, but democracies differ -- mightily -- on ultimate questions. One reason the American promotion of democracy conjures up so little support from other democrats is that American democracy, once a model to emulate, has become an exception to avoid.
Consider America's neighbor to the north. Canadians look south and ask themselves why access to health care remains a privilege of income in the United States and not a right of citizenship. They like hunting and shooting, but can't understand why anyone would regard a right to bear arms as a constitutional right. They can't understand why the American love of limited government does not extend to a ban on the government's ultimate power -- capital punishment. The Canadian government seems poised to extend full marriage rights to gays.
Some American liberals wistfully wish their own country were more like Canada, while for American conservatives, ''Soviet Canuckistan'' -- as Pat Buchanan calls it -- is the liberal hell they are seeking to avoid. But if American liberals can't persuade their own society to be more like other democracies and American conservatives don't want to, both of them are acknowledging, the first with sorrow, the other with joy, that America is an exception.
This is not how it used to be. From the era of F.D.R. to the era of John Kennedy, liberal and progressive foreigners used to look to America for inspiration. For conservatives like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan was a lodestar. The grand boulevards in foreign capitals were once named after these large figures of American legend. For a complex set of reasons, American democracy has ceased to be the inspiration it was. This is partly because of the religious turn in American conservatism, which awakens incomprehension in the largely secular politics of America's democratic allies. It is partly because of the chaos of the contested presidential election in 2000, which left the impression, worldwide, that closure had been achieved at the expense of justice. And partly because of the phenomenal influence of money on American elections. |
Another key point, that leads to more confusion over the issues, though in the past, many of us, myself included looked towards America as the quintessential democracy - the upholder of freedom in the world, with increased knowledge and a greater context of issues, I have found myself dropping this idea. Many of America's fellow democratic nations do not see it as a holding the best points of democracy, but rather focusing on the preservation of the ideals of a meritocracy, where one is free to live in peace and without violence, as long as one can afford it.
Now, trying to spread that throughout the world, without considering any form of compromise, it is as if tyranny is delivering tyranny from tyranny..... Just a great switching of one form of tyranny for another.
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| But the differences between America and its democratic allies run deeper than that. When American policy makers occasionally muse out loud about creating a ''community of democracies'' to become a kind of alternative to the United Nations, they forget that America and its democratic friends continue to disagree about what fundamental rights a democracy should protect and the limits to power government should observe. As Europeans and Canadians head leftward on issues like gay marriage, capital punishment and abortion, and as American politics head rightward, the possibility of America leading in the promotion of a common core of beliefs recedes ever further. Hence the paradox of Jefferson's dream: American liberty as a moral universal seems less and less recognizable to the very democracies once inspired by that dream. In the cold war, America was accepted as the leader of ''the free world.'' The free world -- the West -- has fractured, leaving a fierce and growing argument about democracy in its place. |
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The activists, experts and bureaucrats who do the work of promoting democracy talk sometimes as if democracy were just a piece of technology, like a water pump, that needs only the right installation to work in foreign climes. Others suggest that the promotion of democracy requires anthropological sensitivity, a deep understanding of the infinitely complex board game of foreign (in this case Iraqi) politics.
But Iraqi freedom also depends on something whose measurement is equally complex: what price, in soldiers' bodies and lives, the American people are prepared to pay. The members of the American public are ceaselessly told that stabilizing Iraq will make them more secure. They are told that fighting the terrorists there is better than fighting them at home. They are told that victory in Iraq will spread democracy and stability in the arc from Algeria to Afghanistan. They are told that when this happens, ''they'' won't hate Americans, or hate them as much as they do now. It's hard to know what the American people believe about these claims, but one vital test of whether the claims are believed is the number of adolescent men and women prepared to show up at the recruiting posts in the suburban shopping malls and how many already in the service or Guard choose to re-enlist and sign up for another tour in Ramadi or Falluja. The current word is that recruitment is down, and this is a serious sign that someone at least thinks America is paying too high a price for its ideals. |
And this is the irony of the whole issue: those fighting against the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting for their ideals and dieing everyday are evil. Yet America, spreading its ideals, with its young and often poor soldiers who are fighting and dieing are spread of freedom in the form of their own ideals. All this is in turn supported by the propagandish and often false rhetoric of those who will be the only ones who are benefiting from this war based on the premise that they are defending freedom which may, or may not even exit once this conflict ends.
It is this risk of futility that I think is such a sad part of this issue..... |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 5:42 pm Post subject: |
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because mideast govts and elites are so horrible that they became a threat to the US cause they teach hate , fund Al Qaida , incite violence and plan terror. The US feels that if there are normal goverments there then there will a lot less terror.
Islam historically has been a relatively a tolerant relgion (compared to others ) so it is not the relgion that is that problem but the governments and the elties over there. |
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bignate
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
Location: Hell's Ditch
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| Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| because mideast govts and elites are so horrible that they became a threat to the US cause they teach hate , fund Al Qaida , incite violence and plan terror. |
This is the same thing that is being taught in Madrassas about the US as well Joo.
| Joo wrote: |
| The US feels that if there are normal goverments there then there will a lot less terror. |
Yes, I truely believe they believe this, however, the means and the methods are wrong. Many of the people that they are supposedly freeing may be adverse to a "normal", and by this I assume a democracy based ideologically upon US values.
| Joo wrote: |
| Islam historically has been a relatively a tolerant relgion (compared to others ) so it is not the relgion that is that problem but the governments and the elties over there. |
If you replace Islam with Christianity, and change the context of the statement, do you think this is equally true of the US?
I don't mean to totally dismiss the need for democratization, as I said it is needed. What is not needed is the forcing and idoctrination of a particular form of democracy. The US is the only nation at this juncture, willing to or powerful enough to enforce such a transition, but it is doing it in a way that seems tyrannous to other democracies.
I do not wish anyone to enforce their values on me, I often transition into a various values, I often experience and take these values up as my own - the difference is no one makes me do it at the point of a gun. I no more condone this approach as having someone fly airplanes into buildings - both factions are trying to cause change and both are wrong.
We may share values and we will invariably have different values that are not in common, yet I would never begrudge you this or attempt to force you to change them. That is the point - by enforcing American reform and values upon a complex and very volitile situation and demographic, there is little or no chance for success, because in the end it begets disdain and disgust and violence from enemies and allies alike.
Last edited by bignate on Mon Jul 18, 2005 2:47 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 9:42 pm Post subject: |
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This is a very good article and there are some fairly thoughtful responses by the OP. I want to add my two cents here on some of the issues to provide a different perspective. I am a moderate who supported this war, but like many have begun to regret their decision. The source of this regret lies less in finding fault with the idea of removing Saddam WMD in his hands or no, so much as it moans about the woeful inadequacy of some of the policies carried about by the administration over and beyond the recommendation of professional career officers in both the military and the CIA.
Let me just echo the sentiments the author makes about unfair detention and torture. This truly undermines the project from the start. The Wash Post demonstrated how this torture can be linked to executive policy decisions. It seems to me you cannot relax the policy on torture and claim that it was merely the fault of non-coms when the system was abused, especially after you were warned by JAGs.
I can excuse the siege of Fallujah and its horrors because of the conditions of war. One can make a convincing argument that the nature of the belligerence of the occupants there made total war more necessary. But I must take exception to Abu Ghraib because these people were tortured under lock and key. They were not a threat. Most shamefully, many were innocents detained on mere suspicion.
| Ignatieff wrote: |
| But not everyone believes that democracy in the Middle East will actually make America safer, even in the medium term. Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, for one, has questioned the ''facile assumption that a straight line exists between progress on democratization and the elimination of the roots of Islamic terrorism.'' In the short term, democratization in Egypt, for example, might only bring the radical Muslim Brotherhood to power. Even in the medium term, becoming a democracy does not immunize a society from terrorism. Just look at democratic Spain, menaced by Basque terrorism. |
So true. As BB pointed out before, democracy spreading in Egypt would give rise to an almost certainly anti-American regime.
My objections to spreading democracy lie in pragmatic foundations rather than ideological ones. I will defend the assertion that there is no real problem with forcefully spreading democracy in most cases in theory later. First, let me express my doubts about doing so on a practical level.
The problem, it seems to me, with democracy is that many of the people have to wholeheartedly and sincerely accept the idea for it to work. As it is, democracy simply is not necessarily a good system. Western democracy that includes the ideals of the rule of law that in America's case has evolved from several centuries of continuous Anglo-American tradition is a good system. Otherwise, democracy can be undermined fairly easily, and instead becomes a nice cover for a regime fond of ballot tacos and voter intimidation. In addition, it does not seem to me likely that a people freed from under a dictatorship (except in the case where the dictatorship had overrun former democratic institutions not long beforehand) will have the initiative or experience to run an honest and productive democracy. Although, ironically enough, I think the Shi'a may have a true drive for democracy, and the ethnic division may actually work in some ways to drive at least many Shi'a to support democracy in this case. But it still may not be enough.
I'll add more when I have the time. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 5:33 am Post subject: |
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[quote="bignate"]
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| because mideast govts and elites are so horrible that they became a threat to the US cause they teach hate , fund Al Qaida , incite violence and plan terror. |
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| This is the same thing that is being taught in Madrassas about the US as well Joo. |
well the enemies of the US during WW II told a lot of lies about the US too.
The US overall doesn't do those things , however Bathists , Khomenists and those that luv Bin Laden do that all the time. While the US doesn't live a breathe hate they do.
Look at how they treat their minorities. Look at how they oppress their own people. Look at how they refuse any compromise. They want their war. Again they oppose any compromise.
And they were making war against the US even while the US was defending muslims and even while the US was trying to bring peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
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| Yes, I truely believe they believe this, however, the means and the methods are wrong. Many of the people that they are supposedly freeing may be adverse to a "normal", and by this I assume a democracy based ideologically upon US values. |
The US didn't do it for them it did it for the US. And the situiation was pretty much as bad as it could have been so there wasn't much room for things to get worse.
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| If you replace Islam with Christianity, and change the context of the statement, do you think this is equally true of the US? |
The US is still a very tolerant nation. It wouldn't be fighting in Iraq if Saddam and Bin Laden had been willing to give up their war.
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| I don't mean to totally dismiss the need for democratization, as I said it is needed. What is not needed is the forcing and idoctrination of a particular form of democracy. The US is the only nation at this juncture, willing to or powerful enough to enforce such a transition, but it is doing it in a way that seems tyrannous to other democracies. |
Perhaps so but the US was in a bad situation besides other democracies didn't do much to contain Saddam or deal with other mideast issues that needed to be dealt with. They complian but they have done little to force behavior changes in the mideast by regimes and the elites.
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| I do not wish anyone to enforce their values on me, I often transition into a various values, I often experience and take these values up as my own - the difference is no one makes me do it at the point of a gun. I no more condone this approach as having someone fly airplanes into buildings - both factions are trying to cause change and both are wrong |
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The US wouldn't be fighting if the other side had given up their war.
and if other countires had helped contain Saddam instead of trying to free him they would have some credibility.
and if they took action against Irans acts of terror they would have some credibility.
And if they did something about mideast hate then they would have some credibility. |
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bignate
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
Location: Hell's Ditch
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 6:36 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
Look at how they treat their minorities. Look at how they oppress their own people. Look at how they refuse any compromise. They want their war. Again they oppose any compromise. |
Again can be said true of the US itself, not only by Fundamentalists either....
| Joo wrote: |
| And they were making war against the US even while the US was defending muslims and even while the US was trying to bring peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. |
trying to bring peace, by on oneside leading partisan talks and meetings, while at the same time selling weapons to Israel....
That'd be like someone initially shaking your hand, and then kicking you in the nuts in the very next breath - I don't doubt the US wants Peace in the Middle East, it just goes about it in a partisan and self serving way - that both angers and infuriates the Muslim world.
| Joo wrote: |
| The US is still a very tolerant nation. It wouldn't be fighting in Iraq if Saddam and Bin Laden had been willing to give up their war. |
Yes, and it is becoming less and less tolerant as the time goes by. It wouldn't be fighting in Iraq if it had headed its intelligence reports in the first place, and if its elites weren't so bent on making profits through its Military Industrial Complex...
| Joo wrote: |
| Perhaps so but the US was in a bad situation besides other democracies didn't do much to contain Saddam or deal with other mideast issues that needed to be dealt with. They complian but they have done little to force behavior changes in the mideast by regimes and the elites. |
This is a reasonable assumption, many other countries have let the Middle East become the way it is through initial interference (British in Palestine, the French in Syria, etc.) and subsequent ignorance towards the issues. The US is the only nation, strong enough on its own to "force" change as you say - but what I believe is to try and force will eventually lead to more and more pushing back.... as we have seen in the London Bombings.
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| Kuros wrote: |
| The problem, it seems to me, with democracy is that many of the people have to wholeheartedly and sincerely accept the idea for it to work. As it is, democracy simply is not necessarily a good system. Western democracy that includes the ideals of the rule of law that in America's case has evolved from several centuries of continuous Anglo-American tradition is a good system. Otherwise, democracy can be undermined fairly easily, and instead becomes a nice cover for a regime fond of ballot tacos and voter intimidation. In addition, it does not seem to me likely that a people freed from under a dictatorship (except in the case where the dictatorship had overrun former democratic institutions not long beforehand) will have the initiative or experience to run an honest and productive democracy. |
Excellent points made in your post Kuros, I really like what you have said here, it really does all hinge on the ability or the willingness of a culture to accept the changes that they are being introduced to - the problem is that the means and methods of war rarely are accepted within the occupied peoples during a war.
Another good article on this subject came out last year I believe called The World's Most Dangerous Ideas - Spreading Democracy. The Article's premise relates the need to re-examine the spreading of democracy in the fashion that it is. The "normal" Western Democracy is supposed by Western elites to be the best system out there, yet we do not even consider that there maybe problems in translating to the less than receptive and suspicious cultures as Afghanistan and Iraq.
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The effort to spread democracy is also dangerous in a more indirect way: It conveys to those who do not enjoy this form of government the illusion that it actually governs those who do. But does it? We now know something about how the actual decisions to go to war in Iraq were taken in at least two states of unquestionable democratic bona fides: the United States and the United Kingdom. Other than creating complex problems of deceit and concealment, electoral democracy and representative assemblies had little to do with that process. Decisions were taken among small groups of people in private, not very different from the way they would have been taken in nondemocratic countries. |
This is a very important point, that though the US supports the spread of democracy throughout the world in hopes that it will bring about moderate change in the trouble spots of the globe, it relies on the same tactics it criticises to achieve thier goal - They support a system that they know doesn't even work for themselves - thus losing more influence among those they hope will support them.
In the end I agree with the author, to try and force democracy upon a country or culture that is not ready and does not neccessarily want, trust or understand it, will eventually lead to defeat and failure.... |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 7:48 am Post subject: |
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There is nothing wrong with the idea of spreading democracy. The concepts and values that underpin it are pretty much acceptable to most people: free speech, rule of law, etc.
It can even work by imposition if the right conditions exist. After all, it did suceed in Germany and Japan after the Second World War. Even then, occupying troops stayed on for decades, ensuring time for democracy to take root. Clearly, the same conditions don't exist in Afghanistan and Iraq--at least not to the same extent they did in the other examples.
In cases like Egypt, I would think a nudge in the right direction around the time the yearly aid package is being planned is a better approach. Reform spread out over a decade or so is probably a better policy. |
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joe_doufu
Joined: 09 May 2005
Location: Elsewhere
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 7:53 am Post subject: Re: Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spr |
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Until George W. Bush, no American president -- not even Franklin Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson -- actually risked his presidency on the premise that Jefferson might be right. But this gambler from Texas has bet his place in history on the proposition, as he stated in a speech in March, that decades of American presidents' ''excusing and accommodating tyranny, in the pursuit of stability'' in the Middle East inflamed the hatred of the fanatics who piloted the planes into the twin towers on Sept. 11.
If democracy plants itself in Iraq and spreads throughout the Middle East, Bush will be remembered as a plain-speaking visionary. If Iraq fails, it will be his Vietnam, and nothing else will matter much about his time in office. For any president, it must be daunting to know already that his reputation depends on what Jefferson once called ''so inscrutable [an] arrangement of causes and consequences in this world.'' |
I think I really like this guy. It's refreshing to hear a liberal who has a grasp on what's happening in the world and doesn't just disown his country in the first paragraph of the article.
That said, I think his error is in talking about "democracy"... this word is thrown about a little too casually, IMHO. "Democracy" isn't anything special, it's just a form of government. What the US is trying to spread is "Liberty", a much more interesting concept. It's the concept of the Bill of Rights, a structure that protects its citizens by limiting the powers of government. It could fit into a republic like the USA, a democracy (do any really exist?), or even an arbitrary government (Singapore is a good example). I don't think George Bush or the US government is really set on spreading our form of government... it seems to me we've allowed Iraq and Afghanistan to determine for themselves how they will structure the thing. "Freedom" is what we hope will take root in the Middle East. I think the accusations of "imperialism" don't stick so well when one realizes there is a difference between "democracy" and "freedom". |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:07 am Post subject: Re: Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spr |
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| joe_doufu wrote: |
| It's refreshing to hear a liberal who has a grasp on what's happening in the world and doesn't just disown his country in the first paragraph of the article. |
Would now be a bad time to mention he's not American?  |
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dogbert
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Location: Killbox 90210
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:10 am Post subject: |
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| Many third world peoples are not ready for American-style democracy and perhaps never will be. It is hubris to think that we can impose it upon them. |
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bignate
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
Location: Hell's Ditch
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:12 am Post subject: Re: Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spr |
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| joe_doufu wrote: |
| I think I really like this guy. It's refreshing to hear a liberal who has a grasp on what's happening in the world and doesn't just disown his country in the first paragraph of the article. |
Yah, and he never really disowns the United States either - considering he is Canadian.... 
edit - AHHHH Bulsajo you beat me to it  |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:17 am Post subject: |
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| dogbert wrote: |
| Many third world peoples are not ready for American-style democracy and perhaps never will be. It is hubris to think that we can impose it upon them. |
Agree 100%.
And I think that trying to distinguish between 'democracy' and 'freedom' is a red herring. |
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joe_doufu
Joined: 09 May 2005
Location: Elsewhere
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 3:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Bulsajo wrote: |
| dogbert wrote: |
| Many third world peoples are not ready for American-style democracy and perhaps never will be. It is hubris to think that we can impose it upon them. |
Agree 100%.
And I think that trying to distinguish between 'democracy' and 'freedom' is a red herring. |
I recommend "The Future of Freedom" by Fareed Zakaria. The distinction is very important. Freedom and Democracy are opposites, not cognates. Spreading our structure of government is very different from spreading liberty. I think that to suggest that some countries are just happier and better suited to tyranny is condescending, and I don't take the side of the tyrants. |
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bignate
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
Location: Hell's Ditch
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 4:45 pm Post subject: |
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| joe_doufu wrote: |
| I recommend "The Future of Freedom" by Fareed Zakaria. The distinction is very important. Freedom and Democracy are opposites, not cognates. Spreading our structure of government is very different from spreading liberty. I think that to suggest that some countries are just happier and better suited to tyranny is condescending, and I don't take the side of the tyrants. |
I wouldn't say that they are opposites, they co-exist with one another, however, freedom often suffers at the hands of democracy as much as other forms of governance - to say that we are spreading freedom with democracy is a nice idea, but in the end it is being spread with the barrel of a gun, in a situation that is much different than its source, presently America.
I don't think that Bulsajo or Dogbert meant that tyranny is the best form of government for any citizenry, and I know they didn't say that, rather they intimated that the Middle East may never be able to fully appreciate or incorporate American-style governance.
If you think about it, your point about condescension is equally valid if you apply it to the spreading (read forcing) of a Western form of democracy (with all its Occidental prejudices, condescension, and opinions) in an Eastern (Oriental) populous. |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 5:43 pm Post subject: |
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| joe_doufu wrote: |
| I recommend "The Future of Freedom" by Fareed Zakaria. The distinction is very important. Freedom and Democracy are opposites, not cognates. Spreading our structure of government is very different from spreading liberty. |
Thanks I'll look into it- my local library has yet to let me down; but it still doesn't change what I'm talking about- US foreign policy is based on the assumption that the two are the same, that there are academic arguments over semantics probably doesn't raise any eyebrows in Washington.
| Quote: |
| I think that to suggest that some countries are just happier and better suited to tyranny is condescending, and I don't take the side of the tyrants. |
When you put it that way yes, it is equally condescending. I wouldn't say 'better suited to tyranny' so much as less politically developed. I don't have sources and my memory is less than spectacular but I do recall hypotheses that state that democracy only really takes hold when the population is prepared/educated or in other words 'ready' for it. The are stages of political development just as there are stages of economic development. Some might argue Russia is a good example of this.
And perhaps this concept is flawed but it's certainly no less condescending than current US foreign policy.
It would be nice if the White House listened to academic experts on political theory as well as experts on the nations they are intervening in but it seems to be an unwritten rule not to do so. There are a number of books documenting this Ghost Wars, Imperial Hubris, Against All Enemies, etc. |
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