Be patient with democracy
Zalmay Khalilzad says the American people need to be patient with Iraq. And he’s right. Of course, the delay in forming a national unity government is worrying and creates a dangerous political vacuum that militias are exploiting. Some have responded by saying if the Iraqis are taking so long and are doing a poor job ...
Zalmay Khalilzad says the American people need to be patient with Iraq. And he's right. Of course, the delay in forming a national unity government is worrying and creates a dangerous political vacuum that militias are exploiting. Some have responded by saying if the Iraqis are taking so long and are doing a poor job with democratic politics, there's not much we can do to help them.
Zalmay Khalilzad says the American people need to be patient with Iraq. And he’s right. Of course, the delay in forming a national unity government is worrying and creates a dangerous political vacuum that militias are exploiting. Some have responded by saying if the Iraqis are taking so long and are doing a poor job with democratic politics, there’s not much we can do to help them.
Revisiting American history should make people more patient and more humble. Too many Americans subscribe to the view that the colonists chaffing under Britain’s tyranny rose up and created a democracy, ignoring the fact that pre-1776 the colonists enjoyed far more freedom than Afghans did under the Taliban or Iraqis under Saddam. Indeed, the Revolution was sparked by the conviction that pre-exiting liberties were being trampled on.
Second, the founders did not create a democracy but a highly restrictive republic—no votes for women, blacks, or native Americans. Americans must not succumb to the simplistic version of their history and condemn the nascent Iraqi and Afghan democracies too quickly. Yes, the Abdul Rahman case was appalling and worrying. But it no more proves that democracy can’t exist in Afghanistan, than the presence of slavery in the Southern states proved that there could be no democracy in America. You can not, and must not, expect the Afghans to achieve in two years what it took the United States 178 years to achieve.
The good news is that President Bush has someone on his team who is uniquely qualified to make this argument to the American public: Condi Rice. The other day accepting the apology of a radio host who had used a racial slur to describe her, Rice reflected:
We all carry, I think, deep scars of how the United States came into being with slavery as an initial birth defect for this country, of years and years of racial separation, of racial tension, of years and years of not being able to come to terms with what ‘we the people’ really meant. And what it says to me is that even mature democracies like the United States, we still have our difficulties. And it reminds me that when people say, ‘Well, why haven’t the Iraqis achieved this or why haven’t the Afghans achieved this,’ maybe Americans should be a little bit more humble about how hard it is to build democracy, particularly to build multi-ethnic democracy.
To which there’s nothing left to say but "hear her, hear her."
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