Should we support regime change by the United States military and is there any reason to believe that a U.S. invasion will lead to democracy for the people of Iraq, let alone for the wider region?
Isupport regime change. I support it around the world, including in Iraq, where a dictator holds sway. Thequestion, however, is whether we should support regime change by the United States military and whether thereis any reason to believe that a U.S. invasion will lead to democracy for the people of Iraq, let alone for thewider region.
There are many good reasons to be skepticalthat a U.S. military assault will result in any sort of meaningful democracy. First, one only has to look atwho the supposed agent of this democratic flowering is to be: George W. Bush, who rules the United Statesillegitimately, having stolen the 2000 election, and who presides over the most serious assault on the basicdemocratic rights of the people of the United States in over half a century. Second, one should look at thelong record of U.S. foreign policy.
There has been little acknowledgment of justhow deep U.S. opposition to democracy has been. So even a New York Times article by Todd Purdum inMarch, admitting that the U.S. has not always been a champion of democracy, says the following: "The firstPresident Bush protested when a military coup overthrew the democratically elected leader of Haiti, the Rev.Jean-Bertrand Aristide, but was far less exercised around the same time when the Algerian Army canceled thesecond round of elections that seemed certain to put an Islamic fundamentalist regime in power."
Purdum is right about Algeria, but his accountof Haiti is terribly misleading. In fact, the U.S. had all sorts of ties to the coup plotters in Haiti and didall it could to sabotage efforts to remove the junta.
There are other reasons to be skeptical aboutthe democratic impact of this war: oil contracts, bases, Kurds—plans are being made by the Bushadministration on all these matters, matters that even minimal notions of democracy would leave to Iraqis.Bush, writes Thomas Powers in the March 18 New York Times, "will have virtually unlimited power...fargreater power, for example, than Queen Victoria’s over India in the 19th century."
U.S. officials say the occupation will last atleast two years. Powers notes that the U.S. troops will remain until U.S.-Iranian differences "are resolvedby diplomacy or war, which ever comes first."
The claim that the U.S. wants to bringdemocracy to the region is preposterous. Imagine what democracy in the Middle East today would mean. Is itconceivable that a Saudi Arabian government that reflected the views of its people would be providing basesfor Washington’s war? Would a democratic Egypt allow U.S. forces to transit the Suez canal? Would democraticUAE or Qatar or Bahrain be aiding the U.S. war effort?
Consider Turkey: the U.S. was outraged at aparliamentary vote, which was consistent with the views of 94 percent of population. (The cabinet had earlierbeen pressed by Washington into approving a deal before details were even worked out, hardly a model ofdemocratic practice.) The Turkish military said it had avoided making a statement before the parliament’svote because it knew that would be undemocratic, but after the failed vote it didn’t refrain from pressingfor a reversal, with U.S. backing.
A February 26, 2003 classified State Departmentreport was leaked to the Los Angeles Times (March 14, 2003). The thrust of the document, according to asource, was "...this idea that you’re going to transform the Middle East and fundamentally alter itstrajectory is not credible."
"Even if some version of democracy tookroot—an event the report casts as unlikely—anti-American sentiment is so pervasive that elections in theshort term could lead to the rise of Islamic-controlled governments hostile to the United States and Electoraldemocracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti- American elements."
Bush refers to his "coalition of thewilling" and many analysts have noted that it is a coalition of the coerced and the bribed. But it’s alsoa coalition of the undemocratic. It is a coalition of governments whose views do not reflect the views oftheir people—the basic, minimal definition of demo- cracy.
As Colin Powell proudly put it: "We need toknock down this idea that nobody is on our side." Many nations share our view. "And they do it in the faceof public opposition." (NYT, March 10, 2003)
Britain, Spain, Italy: in all these countriesoverwhelming majorities of the population are opposed to war. Nor are things any different in the "NewEurope." In Bulgaria, for example, the one Security Council supporter of the U.S.-UK-Spanish position, aJanuary poll showed 59 percent of the population opposed to war in any circumstances and another 28 percentopposed to war without Security Council backing, with only 5 percent favoring a unilateral war by the UnitedStates and its allies.
The only country in the world where a majorityof the population supports war is Israel and this is the one country that is not officially part of thecoalition of the willing (for fear it will drive some of the willing into becoming unwilling).
In the United States, there is no decisivevoice for war. While the latest polls seem to show majority support for war, the same polls show that 60percent believe the U.S. should take into account the views of its allies, more want the U.S. to take accountof any UN veto than don’t, and 52 percent want the inspectors to be given more time (CBS/NYT poll, March7-9). A USA Today poll the weekend of March 15 says that 50 percent oppose war if there is no UNresolution.
The CBS/NYT poll also shows that 62 percentthink the Bush administration is not telling the public important information it needs to know, but aplurality believe, contrary to any evidence, that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11terrorist attacks. This poll data suggests considerable confusion, which is not surprising, given thegovernment lies, forgeries, plagiarism, and press self-censorship. (Would public opinion be different if theU.S. press had given prominent attention to the U.S. spying on the UN or the suppressed testimony of the Iraqidefector?) Democratic backing doesn’t automatically make a war right, but this will surely be one of themost undemocratic wars ever waged.
Some have argued that U.S. policy has yieldeddemocracy before, specifically in the case of Japan following World War II. The analogy, however, isunconvincing.
First, U.S. policy makers maintained theemperor in power, planning to use his authority to enhance their own control over Japan and to make sure thatthey determined the pace and extent of change. This meant that criticisms of the emperor had to be suppressed.Thus, a left- wing film critical of the emperor was banned by American officials in 1946. Anything negativeabout the emperor was kept out of the Tokyo war crimes trial.
In the first few years of the occupation, somegenuine democratic reforms were introduced in Japan: there was land reform, unions were promoted, the newconstitution included a "no war" pledge, some right-wing militarists were purged, and some of thezaibatsu, the corporate behemoths of the Japanese economy, were broken up. But these reforms were carried outby New Dealers, the most liberal U.S. government in history, while in Iraq we can look forward to rule by themost reactionary U.S. regime in more than 70 years. By 1948, as Washington came to realize thatChina was not going to become an anti-communist bastion and that a powerful alternative was needed, U.S.occupation policy in Japan underwent a "reverse course." Japanese economic power would now be rebuilt aspart of an anti-Soviet alliance and many of the early reforms were weakened or repealed. War criminals werereleased. A threatened general strike was banned in 1947 and over the next three years imposed laws severelyweakening the labor movement. In 1949, there was a mass purge of Communists, using regulations originallydesigned for ultra- right militarists.
Japan’s dominant conservative politicianswere allowed to maintain their grip on power by the U. S. Occupation authorities and were secretly bankrolledby the CIA through the 1960s.
The U.S. occupation lasted seven years (and twodecades longer for Okinawa), but before it ended U.S. officials took two more steps to consolidate Japan asWashington’s key ally against communism in Asia. First, the U.S. obtained military bases in Japan, whichthey maintain to this day. Second, they got Tokyo to agree that it would not trade with the Chinese mainland.For the latter to be feasible, U.S. policy makers determined that Japan would need to seek what StateDepartment planner George Kennan called "an empire to the south." U.S. government officials frankly spokeof sponsoring a new "Co- Prosperity Sphere." This meant U.S. subversion, counterinsurgency, and massiveattack to keep Southeast Asia in Washington’s global economic system. Thus, the war purportedly fought todefeat aggression and militarism in Asia led to U.S. policies of aggression and militarism in Asia.
One final indication of the U.S. view ofdemocracy is its attitude toward the UN: the organization must follow U.S. orders or Washington will do whatit wants anyway; that the U.S. has the right to openly bribe other nations to secure their votes; thatWashington alone has the right to interpret UN resolutions; and so on.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedmansays that he favors war despite the odds that things will turn out horribly because he thinks it’s worth thelong-shot chance for democracy. So even if the likelihood of democracy emerging is small, isn’t that betterthan nothing? Shouldn’t we take the chance, even if there weren’t many tremendous costs of going to war,such as:
There are many grim predictions about civiliancasualties from NGOs and internal UN documents. Fred Kaplan on Slate is right that these are justguesses, with no solid proof. But the rosy predictions of the Bush administration are no less guesses andthere are reasons to be concerned
Consider that a report in the LondonIndependent, February 2, 2003, stated, "The Ministry of Defence yesterday admitted the electricitysystem that powers water and sanitation for the Iraqi people could be a military target, despite warnings thatits destruction would cause a humanitarian tragedy."
U.S. war games were reported (NYT,October 22, 2002) to involve 10 percent casualties among the attacking force in urban warfare in Baghdad. Canone imagine how many civilians the U.S. will put at risk to minimize the dangers to its own forces?
Bush has warned that Saddam Hussein has beeninterspersing troops and military targets among the civilian population and that any harm would be Saddam’sfault. But if Bush intends to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam, then presumably he views them ashostages, and who would want hostages liberated by U.S. cruise missiles and MOAB munitions?
So even if we were sure that war would bringdemocracy to Iraq, the costs would be too high. But of course, we are not at all sure. While one doesn’tknow what the future will bring, whether the U.S. will install some sort of democratic facade or keep GeneralTommy Franks as the local proconsul, one thing is clear: there won’t be real democracy for the people ofIraq.
Courtesy: Znet Stephen R. Shalom teaches politicalscience at William Patterson University in New Jersey. He is the author of numerous articles and books, mostrecentlyWhich Side Are You On? (Longman), a political science text book.