Rural Ruminations

Originally published in the Herald of Randoph

The popular uprisings and protests in the Middle East that began in December 2010 and America’s reactions to them have left many wondering precisely what our policy is in that region and what motivates it.

Of course, years of established policy have left to the Obama administration only bad options today.  There really is nothing they can do that is both practical in the sense that it forwards our national interests and is, at the same time, consistent with what we claim to be our basic national principles.

Over the years, our policy has been driven neither by pure pragmatism, nor by pure ideology.  It has been an admixture of the two and that dichotomy has not been to our advantage.  In fact, we are viewed in the region as hypocritical, seen, for example, in our overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh regime in Iran in 1953.

What were the factors that drove our Middle East policies after the Second World War?  First, we were either dismally or willfully ignorant of realities in Islam.  We seldom let facts on the ground get in the way of or influence our chosen policies.

During Cold war, we felt it necessary to keep as many nations as possible on our side and aligned against the Soviet Union.  Thus, even in the aftermath of years of Imperialism in the region, we found it pragmatically necessary to make whatever accommodations were necessary to maintain the support of the autocratic, repressive and corrupt Middle East regimes that had replaced the imperialists.  Democracy, what’s that?

The creation of a democratic, Zionist Israel and our decision to support literally whatever they felt they needed to do in support of their national goals, left us, ultimately, in the same ambivalent boat of pragmatism vs. idealism.  In the face of UN vetoes, and international rulings on, for example, the illegality of the ongoing west Bank settlement program, America edges ever further into the arena of hypocrisy.

Additionally, we have stationed our foreign American troops on Islam’s holiest ground and fought wars that have killed Muslim civilians – very much taboo under the Koran.  With all of our strident talk about bringing Democracy to Islam whether they want it, need it or not, we have turned into the twenty-first Century Crusaders.  That really means something in Islam.  Even though the first Crusades were in the 11-12^th Centuries, no one in Islam forgets them!

We have seen three wars fought between Arabs and Israelis.  The Palestinians have endless shelled Israel and Israel has invaded Lebanon and Gaza to suppress them.

The very nature of the Muslim Middle East with its Sunni-Shia and Arab-Persian splits, Its multiple ethnic rivalries, tribalism, corruption, bellicosity and political instabilities, introduces realities which we cannot control and poorly understand.  As a nation, we are sadly lacking in our grasp of the complexities that dominate the Middle East, making the creation of rational foreign policy illusive at best. In addition, we have the constant negative and confusing intrusion of internal American politics into the formation of foreign policy.

Add oil into this volatile mixture in a time of rising international demand and shrinking resources, and any observer will begin to see the problem for U.S. policy makers.

Rami Khouri, an Arab-American educator and commentator, recently wrote perceptively and accurately that “……..Washington has become a marginal player in much of the Middle East, largely as a consequence of its own incompetence, inconsistency, bias and weakness ….”

Our past foreign policy inconsistencies, our decline of influence in the Middle East and our ongoing activities have put us in the position of alienating someone, somewhere, every time we make a policy decision.

Informal polling shows about half the Arab “street” in favor of Western involvement with the Libyan rebels, while the other half are suspicious of western intentions.  Our “allies” in the region like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen and the Gulf states, along with those whom we do not support like Syria and Iran, are very nervous about our involvement in Libya, fearing it might catalyze their own peoples.  Ongoing tendencies toward self-determination even have the Chinese worried.

The larger question here is what the result of these rebellions will be.  Will they spread further to places like Saudi Arabia where we have far more at stake?  How will we react to that?  Then, what will evolve in Tunis, Egypt and Libya?  Will we see stability?  Will the outcomes be in our favor?

The genie is out of the bottle and we are without significant influence!

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[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]

Let’s start out by agreeing that, whatever its faults, the liberal democracy that exists here in the United States ranks among the best forms of government that ever have been invented by mankind. In a nutshell, it goes to the yearnings that almost all people have for control over their lives and destinies.

Those yearnings are not the sole province of Americans. They are shared by most others around the world, ranging broadly from Western Europe where liberal democracies are in place, through the rigid, repressive regimes of the Middle East and North Africa, and on to Iran, China and North Korea. It also includes countries that lie somewhere in between those extremes, like Russia, Venezuela and Cuba, where one or more of the necessary pillars of democracy — a constitution, free elections, freedom of the press and the rule of law — are missing.

With totalitarianism under the gun in North Africa and the Middle East, American and Western politicians and pundits are calling for “democracy” for all those people. And wouldn’t it be nice if we could simply wave our magic wand and install our liberal democracy in those countries? Perhaps not.

The problem is that most of the citizens of those Islamic countries don’t have the foggiest idea what “democracy” really is, and there’s a good possibility that if they did, they might not be so keen on importing it into the Islamic world.

All they really know is that they don’t like what they have — Mubarak in Egypt, Gadhafi in Libya — and that they like the idea of being able to get more freedom, more control over their lives.

But there are a lot of conflicts involved in importing “democracy” into Islam. The Quran is a complete blueprint for life. It tells the believer everything he or she needs to know to lead an appropriate life. Much of that instruction, however, is essentially incompatible with the ideals of liberal democracy.

The root of the problem lies in the fact that in Islam, God determines the laws through the Quran, shariya and hadith. Under strict interpretation, man has only limited license to interpret those laws. Under shariya law, all aspects of life — religious, political, economic, social and private — are predetermined. There is little room for man to intervene.

Then there are practical matters like the extremes of stoning people, cutting off hands as punishment and the overall treatment of women. The extent of adherence to Islamic law depends on the time and place. Some modern Islamic democracies like Turkey and Indonesia have opted not to enforce all those laws. Other Islamic countries, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, have stuck to the traditional interpretation of Islam, which can hardly be called democratic.

What this means today is that we may not do anyone any service by calling for the “democratization” of Islamic countries. In the long run, the inhabitants of those countries may decide that democracy is incompatible with their Islamic ideals. All we know for sure about the stirrings of discontent in the Arab world is that the people in those countries know what they don’t want. They don’t want Arab dictatorships and the concomitant suppression of their own needs and desires. From that we can infer that what they do want is control over their lives and destinies.

When we preach about the virtues and advantages of our democracy, all we are saying is that it works for us. We seldom stop to think that it works for us largely because we have been at it for almost 250 years. We are comfortable with it.

The democracy that many Muslims seek is essentially unknown to them. They have never lived it or worked at it, as we have. It is simply an idealized goal for them. Given that reality, perhaps we should consider what we really want for these peoples.

That seems pretty straightforward. What we want for them is the right for them to choose whatever system of government they wish through the democratic process of free elections. That process is called self-determination, which is a word that does not prejudice the outcome of the process. All it says is that any people would be allowed to determine the kind of government under which to live.

In Islam that may very well turn out not to be democracy as we know it in America, but if those peoples and the region are to find any sort of stability, self-determination is the only practical way they have to reach it.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Eastern and Western Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff.

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