"The only force powerful enough to stop the rise of tyranny and terror, and replace hatred with hope, is the force of human freedom," the president said Wednesday.
But if the idea is to sink despots, and the terrorists will slip away with them, Iraq sure hasn't followed that pattern -- nor have a lot of other countries.
The whole notion that a war against tyranny will wash back favorably on the terrorism fight is contradicted by a host of nations where poverty and ethnic and religious differences kept voters from achieving noble goals.
The first post-communist votes in the former Yugoslavia begot the nationalist politicians who begot the civil wars of 1991 through 1999.
U.S. officials say they're approaching the tyranny wars realistically.
"Yes, we have interests, and we know
that there is a world out there that looks a certain way, that we have to deal with the world as it is," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told her staff Tuesday. "But you know, the thing about the Trumans and the Achesons and the Kennans is they didn't just accept the world as it was. They believed that it was possible to change it. That's why this is an extraordinary time.
"That's why the Department of State is going to be leading a tremendous effort to use our diplomacy literally to change the world."
Grand words. Grand ideas -- putting Rice in the same position as the original architects of Cold War victory, who designed the NATO alliance and a strategy for resisting and containing communist expansionism. Eventually, the Soviet empire was defeated.
But can the war on tyranny "change the world" any more than did the discarded war against axis-of-evil states of four years ago?
America is losing the war that counts -- the "soft war" of ideas, rather than the hard war of brute force, writes Harvard University's Joseph Nye in a recent "Project Syndicate" column for a worldwide grouping of newspapers.
"Politics has become a contest about credibility," Nye argues. And the United States "has not kept up."
Democracy indeed has the power to alter the landscape of the Middle East. Success in Iraq or the Palestinian territories would resonate across a vast Arab world in which the voice of the people is lacking. Yet by the same token, an Iraq in which Shia demagogue and former Pentagon darling Ahmad Chalabi rises to the top would confirm to many doubting Arabs that Iraq elections really were just a plot to install a U.S. puppet.
Bush was right when he said, "hopeful reform is already taking hold in an arc from Morocco to Jordan to Bahrain." Yet in none of these nations do the people have a voice in choosing their top leaders, only in their legislatures.
Some other examples of the problem:
Saudi Arabia: America's No. 1 oil-producing ally in the Persian Gulf, the kingdom is readying its first local and municipal elections. It's also cracking down on al-Qaida sympathizers and the fanatic clerics that nurture them.
Yet the country remains a prime recruiting ground for terrorists fighting jihad in Iraq -- as well as being Osama bin Laden's main target for Islamist revolt. Anti- U.S. sentiments have been rising. An al-Qaida takeover would give the terrorists control of one-fourth of the world's proven oil reserves.
Pakistan: Military dictator Pervez Musharraf has emerged as America's most important ally in the war against terror, and not just because bin Laden is probably hiding out nearby. Pakistan owns something terrorists want more than oil: a small arsenal of nuclear bombs.
The fact that Musharraf stole power from a democratic government has meant he's been able to buck popular opinion to dedicate the nation to the U.S. terror fight. But at a price -- pushing once-marginalized Islamic militants into the political mainstream, and stoking dangerous rifts within his previously secular military. Three recent assassination attempts against Musharraf signal trouble ahead.
Nepal: Washington has been shoveling millions to this impoverished Himalayan kingdom facing Maoist insurgency. The place is so remote and the government so weak -- especially following a 2001 massacre of virtually the entire royal family apparently perpetrated by the crown prince, who then killed himself -- that U.S. counterterrorism officials worry it could tempt more than the small band of militants and terrorists who now transit the region.
And a sensitive region it is, lying between India and China. That's why U.S. reaction was distinctly muted this week after King Gyanendra, who took power after his brother's family was wiped out, instigated a one-man putsch by disbanding the nation's elected government.
He put the prime minister under house arrest before shutting down all Internet communications, the airport and phones, suppressing local newspaper coverage and naming his own puppet Cabinet. Under most definitions of the term, Nepal is no longer a parliamentary democracy.(Cleveland Plain Dealer -- Ohio -- US/Elizabeth Sullivan) Sullivan is The Plain Dealer's foreign-affairs columnist and an associate editor of the editorial page.
The Real World
Seeing No Evil, Bush Takes Aim at Despotism
Radio Rote
(Radio Rote reminds us of the real world. Furthermore the Hezbollah rally and the one in Damascus also remind us that success is not assured)
For a leader embarked on a worldwide quest to end tyranny, President George W. Bush's language has gotten curiously detoxified.
Forget "evil." It's so passe.
Four years after Bush set the stage for attacking Iraq with his "axis of evil" State of the Union speech, the word came up only once Wednesday night -- in a quote from terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The Iraqi beheader was condemning the "evil principle" of democracy.
The anti-terror war has morphed into the anti-tyranny war. And Iraq is recast as its first battlefield.
"The only force powerful enough to stop the rise of tyranny and terror, and replace hatred with hope, is the force of human freedom," the president said Wednesday.
But if the idea is to sink despots, and the terrorists will slip away with them, Iraq sure hasn't followed that pattern -- nor have a lot of other countries.
The whole notion that a war against tyranny will wash back favorably on the terrorism fight is contradicted by a host of nations where poverty and ethnic and religious differences kept voters from achieving noble goals.
The first post-communist votes in the former Yugoslavia begot the nationalist politicians who begot the civil wars of 1991 through 1999.
U.S. officials say they're approaching the tyranny wars realistically.
"Yes, we have interests, and we know
that there is a world out there that looks a certain way, that we have to deal with the world as it is," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told her staff Tuesday. "But you know, the thing about the Trumans and the Achesons and the Kennans is they didn't just accept the world as it was. They believed that it was possible to change it. That's why this is an extraordinary time.
"That's why the Department of State is going to be leading a tremendous effort to use our diplomacy literally to change the world."
Grand words. Grand ideas -- putting Rice in the same position as the original architects of Cold War victory, who designed the NATO alliance and a strategy for resisting and containing communist expansionism. Eventually, the Soviet empire was defeated.
But can the war on tyranny "change the world" any more than did the discarded war against axis-of-evil states of four years ago?
America is losing the war that counts -- the "soft war" of ideas, rather than the hard war of brute force, writes Harvard University's Joseph Nye in a recent "Project Syndicate" column for a worldwide grouping of newspapers.
"Politics has become a contest about credibility," Nye argues. And the United States "has not kept up."
Democracy indeed has the power to alter the landscape of the Middle East. Success in Iraq or the Palestinian territories would resonate across a vast Arab world in which the voice of the people is lacking. Yet by the same token, an Iraq in which Shia demagogue and former Pentagon darling Ahmad Chalabi rises to the top would confirm to many doubting Arabs that Iraq elections really were just a plot to install a U.S. puppet.
Bush was right when he said, "hopeful reform is already taking hold in an arc from Morocco to Jordan to Bahrain." Yet in none of these nations do the people have a voice in choosing their top leaders, only in their legislatures.
Some other examples of the problem:
Saudi Arabia: America's No. 1 oil-producing ally in the Persian Gulf, the kingdom is readying its first local and municipal elections. It's also cracking down on al-Qaida sympathizers and the fanatic clerics that nurture them.
Yet the country remains a prime recruiting ground for terrorists fighting jihad in Iraq -- as well as being Osama bin Laden's main target for Islamist revolt. Anti- U.S. sentiments have been rising. An al-Qaida takeover would give the terrorists control of one-fourth of the world's proven oil reserves.
Pakistan: Military dictator Pervez Musharraf has emerged as America's most important ally in the war against terror, and not just because bin Laden is probably hiding out nearby. Pakistan owns something terrorists want more than oil: a small arsenal of nuclear bombs.
The fact that Musharraf stole power from a democratic government has meant he's been able to buck popular opinion to dedicate the nation to the U.S. terror fight. But at a price -- pushing once-marginalized Islamic militants into the political mainstream, and stoking dangerous rifts within his previously secular military. Three recent assassination attempts against Musharraf signal trouble ahead.
Nepal: Washington has been shoveling millions to this impoverished Himalayan kingdom facing Maoist insurgency. The place is so remote and the government so weak -- especially following a 2001 massacre of virtually the entire royal family apparently perpetrated by the crown prince, who then killed himself -- that U.S. counterterrorism officials worry it could tempt more than the small band of militants and terrorists who now transit the region.
And a sensitive region it is, lying between India and China. That's why U.S. reaction was distinctly muted this week after King Gyanendra, who took power after his brother's family was wiped out, instigated a one-man putsch by disbanding the nation's elected government.
He put the prime minister under house arrest before shutting down all Internet communications, the airport and phones, suppressing local newspaper coverage and naming his own puppet Cabinet. Under most definitions of the term, Nepal is no longer a parliamentary democracy.(Cleveland Plain Dealer -- Ohio -- US/Elizabeth Sullivan) Sullivan is The Plain Dealer's foreign-affairs columnist and an associate editor of the editorial page.
Posted by Ted Belman at March 9, 2005 08:24 AM