[Originally published in the Herald of Randolph.]
This year’s news reports have brought us stories ranging from Kosovan independence, through Moqtada al Sadr’s changing positions on a Shiite ceasefire in Iraq, to Turkish incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan. Far too many Americans fail to recognize that these struggles, like innumerable other examples throughout the world, are products of conflicts and animosities that have been going on sporadically or continuously for centuries, even millennia.
Much of today’s conflicted world is built on age-old animosities, or more recently on animosities occasioned by three centuries of western colonialism in today’s less developed world. These unsettled areas are often tribal, or Muslim, or ruled by modern dictators or imperialist governments. In most cases, their people do not know and do not seek any other form of governance. Yet America is convinced that a world that largely has no history of democracy, free press or the rule of law – the absolute minimum imperatives on which democracy is built – is somehow ripe for democratization.
Today’s American democracy evolved over 500 years. During that period, Europeans and North Americans hammered out its philosophical bases and battled through its revolutionary birth pangs. Along with our European forebears, we came by our belief in and adherence to “democracy” experientially and legitimately through centuries of difficult intellectual and physical conflict.
In the halls of American power, the old truism is true: No one reads history. If they did, they would probably not be eager to get involved in battles that have been going on for centuries, offering the curative wonders of democracy and capitalism as their one-size-fits-all solution for the ills of the world. Yet we blunder on, selling democracy rather than the basic right of self-determination, which is the right of people to choose the form of government under which they will live.
Deeply embedded in the psyche of the American people is the notion that they have the objectively most perfect form of government and economic system on the face of this earth. Even with all its faults and inequities, that may be true – at least for us Americans.
And what of Islam? Islam holds that the Koran represents the only enduring truth. It gives believers a complete and unequivocal blueprint for life, while we hold the same true for our Constitutional underpinnings. Who is right? Does it even matter who is right?
Part of the problem we face in the world today is a problem of our own creation. Much of it is occasioned by our absolute conviction that we know the truth. Our truth it is based on democracy and capitalism and we will bring it messianically to the rest of the world, militarily if need be, whether they want it or not.
Americans and Muslims alike believe that their system is the best. Both parties have evangelical components. The Muslims are told it is their duty to bring Islam to the rest of the world simply because it is the perfect word of Allah. Americans are told we must bring democracy to the world because it is the absolute best form of governance on the planet. Neither side can comprehend the other’s disinterest. This conflict is like all the other ethnic, tribal, religious and ideological conflicts in the world because believers on both sides see themselves as right and their opponents as wrong.
The portent in these conflicts for the United States is that we will suffer unless we learn that there are no easy, quick fixes. What may appear to be the right thing to do in any given situation may well be wrong, or inflict further damage on mankind, or both. That understanding, which brings with it acceptance that truth is relative among different cultures, is the only thing that can possibly save us from our own inclination to “fix the world”.
The history of man gives reasonable evidence that there are endless traps lying in wait for 21st Century America. We really had better know what we are doing when we stick out a toe, however tentatively, with the notion that, in doing so, we will make the world a better place. Our current policies on Iraq and terrorism demonstrate clearly that we see the world only as we would like it to be, rather than as it really is. That lack of understanding will always serve us poorly.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as Chief of the Counter-terrorism Staff. He lives in Williston.
