Mistakes of the Bush Administration

I want to quote you again. You're faulting the Democrats at one point, but it's a more general point that needs to be made, you're criticizing U.S. democratic idealism for the "wholly unrealistic timeframe it sets for the development of stable democracy, for its indifference for the social, economic, and cultural changes necessary to underpin democracy, and for its bizarre belief that democracy elsewhere in the world necessarily equals support for American foreign policy."

It's something that's bewildered me since I first came to America. After all, the United States has lived throughout its history next to Latin America. What has the history of Latin America been? It's been a history of repeated attempts to create -- well, first just constitutional systems, and then later democratic systems, which have repeatedly failed because the real foundations for a successful democracy in terms of institution building, in terms of changes in political culture, in terms of economic distribution, not just economic growth but equitable development, in terms of land reform, were not laid. Now perhaps, let's hope, that this is happening now. But today, once again, we see regression in parts of Latin America. What we also see there is that very popular movements, democratic movements with mass support are, at the same time, often bitterly anti-American. And yet, with all this experience in America's own neighborhood, people go out to the Muslim world, for example, and they seriously think that through democracy you can get Iranians to support American policies which the great majority of Iranians see as anti-Iranian. There is something really quite surreal about this, almost lunatic.

One of the key things we say in the book in line with this is that neoconservatives talk about democracy but they don't like it being practiced very much, because the practice of democracy doesn't [guarantee support of U.S. policy] in the Middle East. Chancellor Schroeder didn't make the German people oppose the [Iraq] war by 80%. The government in Turkey, by having a free vote in their parliament, were following the 90% of the population [who are] against the war. Chirac didn't evilly brainwash the French. You can be democratic and not come up with pro-American outcomes.

Look at the Middle East. Say that we're wrong. Say you can add water and get George Washington. We're absolutely wrong: history doesn't matter, culture doesn't matter. What would we have in the Middle East? The Muslim Brotherhood would be running Egypt. A mixture of generals, people around AQ Khan, and bin Laden supporters would be running Pakistan. King Mohammed of Morocco would be dead; the friend of America, King Abdul of Jordan, friend of America, would be dead. We'd live in a really dastardly, awful place. Is that really in the interest of anybody? If you leave the building blocks out that Anatol talks about, you will see the Hamas election, you will get these outcomes.

For the Bush people to be bewildered by this, as they have been, shows their philosophical background. This is not a group of people who just were incompetent. That's too easy. This is a group of people who had a philosophy that has been found dreadfully wanting. It's the building blocks of democracy, which may take generations, may take centuries to develop, that really matter. An election is the end result, not the beginning.

You point out that in our present circumstances these kinds of blinders lead to a total misunderstanding of who the adversary is, a confusion of states with internal developments and the sources of terrorism, which then affects the choices about policy which then turn out to be wrong and seem to say that all these problems can be solved with military solutions. Democracy with guns, basically, or at the tip of a bayonet.

That's right. By simplifying these approaches -- I mean, President Bush, this morning at a press conference said that in the war on terror, now one of the fronts is in Iraq. Although that's true, it totally doesn't look at why that's true. To equate Saddam Hussein, Ba'athist, pan-Arab, pan-Socialist, pan-secularist, with bin Laden, who's trying to establish a caliphate, wouldn't make sense to anybody. By getting it wrong, by failing so abysmally to see Iraq as these Ottoman provinces that we've talked about, he's actually created a countervailing movement.

Does anyone seriously think that al Qaeda have not benefited by American disasters in the Middle East? Be it the position in Lebanon, be it Iraq, be it Iran, where they can [say] "Crusader imperialists invaded Afghanistan, they've now invaded Iraq. They've failed, they're weak; come support us." The ultimate goal isn't the destruction of al Qaeda as a structure, it's to stop radical Islam. As Rumsfeld, in one of the few moments that I agree with, said, "Are we really winning the war if five guys walk out of a madras for every one we kill or capture?"

No, we're not winning hearts and minds, and the problem is worse than we found it by substituting democracy promotion for fighting al Qaeda, where we did have the support of most of the great powers in the world. China, Russia -- remember Afghanistan? -- pretty much everybody came along. Colin Powell was very skillful, but there was the basis for that intraspace deal. By substituting democracy promotion at the tip of a gun, as you say, all that goodwill is squandered, and worse, the goodwill from the Cold War has been squandered.

Britain, our greatest ally, now thinks we're the fourth most dangerous country in the world, and if we need them to do something military, their military is even more over-stretched than our own. There's simply nothing in the bank, either in terms of goodwill or wherewithal, and that's something that we're going to be paying for, for the decades to come.

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