Youssef Ibraham, I Love You!
This guy is such a great columnist. So many of the British and American Arab columnists are so right on about the Middle East. I know he's not the first to sum up the impact of the invasion of Iraq over the past week or so, but this - A Fighting Chance for Freedom in Iraq - is one of the best.
Well, okay. I like it because it sums up exactly what I think about the issue and always have. But this passage in particular is worth emphasizing:
The only thing I might disagree with is the notion that the Iraq project has failed. They have had one general election for the purpose of forming their first democratic government. That was less than four years ago. Most functioning democracies only hold elections every four or five years. Give Iraq a generation, at least, with the opportunity to hold the concomitant number of general elections, before you declare the project a failure. Democracy is more than a single event. It's more than a group of institutions. It's a process. A process involving a guaranteed recurring of events such as elections; a process involving interaction between civil institutions such as parliaments, courts, a free press, reasonable laws and protection of its citizens with plenty of opportunity for public participation at all levels and in many ways beside just the political. A process that never finishes.
If the Iraqis have their next scheduled election in 2010 and several more and if in that time they develop and deepen the institutions that are now just emerging, then perhaps 20 to 25 years from now, one can cast judgment about whether the bold experiment has succeeded or failed. And yes, Arabs do have the democracy gene. Of that I have no doubt.
Well, okay. I like it because it sums up exactly what I think about the issue and always have. But this passage in particular is worth emphasizing:
"No one who was a witness to those events was blind to the fact that a grand majority of the Arab world’s 300 million folks from Morocco to Saudi Arabia at that moment did yearn to be rid of their Saddamist rulers. That dream has not died even as the Iraqi project fails. The Lebanese picked up the pieces of it in their Cedar revolt of 2005, which ended 30 years of Syrian military occupation before it fizzled under renewed Syrian pressure. Egyptians launched an effervescent “Kefaya” (enough) movement that fluttered for a while. Syrians still pray for the day they are rid of the Assad dynasty. Saudis look at the al-Sauds, asking for God to take them into his mercy sooner. To argue that Arabs have no democracy genes is brainless. The momentum may have slowed but those movements are alive."
The only thing I might disagree with is the notion that the Iraq project has failed. They have had one general election for the purpose of forming their first democratic government. That was less than four years ago. Most functioning democracies only hold elections every four or five years. Give Iraq a generation, at least, with the opportunity to hold the concomitant number of general elections, before you declare the project a failure. Democracy is more than a single event. It's more than a group of institutions. It's a process. A process involving a guaranteed recurring of events such as elections; a process involving interaction between civil institutions such as parliaments, courts, a free press, reasonable laws and protection of its citizens with plenty of opportunity for public participation at all levels and in many ways beside just the political. A process that never finishes.
If the Iraqis have their next scheduled election in 2010 and several more and if in that time they develop and deepen the institutions that are now just emerging, then perhaps 20 to 25 years from now, one can cast judgment about whether the bold experiment has succeeded or failed. And yes, Arabs do have the democracy gene. Of that I have no doubt.
posted by Louise at 5:42 pm
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