PG , WASHINGTON — Rebuking those who say the task will be all-but-impossible, President Bush said yesterday that Islamic countries in the Mideast were ripe for democracy and gently challenged two U.S. allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to set an example.
“Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty?” Bush said in what was labeled a major speech to the National Endowment for Democracy. “Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even have a choice in the matter? I, for one, do not believe it.”
The speech came just before the president signed into law a bill giving him $87 billion more to spend in Iraq and Afghanistan in the next 12 months. In the speech he described the U.S. occupation of Iraq as central to moving democracy forward in the rest of the region.
“Iraqi democracy will succeed — and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran — that freedom can be the future of every nation,” Bush said. “The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.”
The president invoked former President Ronald Reagan's phrase — “cultural condescension,” which Reagan used in talking about the Soviet bloc nations two decades ago — in rebutting the contention that certain people, including Muslim fundamentalists, do not yearn for freedom.
He put some of the blame for the failure of democracy to take root in the Mideast on the big powers, including the United States, saying they had done little to help.
“Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe,” Bush said, “because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.”
The president's call for democracy comes against a background of open warfare between civilian leaders at the Pentagon who have argued that the Iraq war was fought not only to get rid of Saddam Hussein but also to democratize Iraq, and officials in the State Department who have been highly skeptical that democracy could take hold there without years of preparation.
A State Department report leaked to the media insisted that in Iraq, “liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve” and that anti-American forces could easily exploit it if it were to take hold. Secretary of State Colin Powell's office has said, however, that such pessimism never came from the top of his department.
Bush did not give specific examples of any new steps he might be contemplating to promote democracy in such countries as Iran and Syria. But he focused his scorn on rulers in both countries.
“The regime in Tehran must heed the democratic demands of the Iranian people or lose its last claim to legitimacy,” he said. He accused Syria's leaders of leaving a “legacy of torture, oppression, misery and ruin.”
Bush also insisted that the United States had no choice but to succeed in democratizing Iraq. “The failure of Iraqi democracy would embolden terrorists around the world, increase dangers to the American people and extinguish the hopes of millions in the region,” he said.
Bush was cautious in his remarks about authoritarianism in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Just as Egypt had shown the way to peace in the Middle East by reaching out to Israel, he said, it should show the way to democracy.
Asked repeatedly why Bush wasn't harsher toward those countries, both allies in the war in Iraq and both with repressive regimes, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: “Well, first of all, Saudi Arabia has taken some initial steps toward reform, and we welcome those steps. … There are a lot of ways that we're working to advance the spread of democracy and the spread of freedom. Democracies take time to take hold and develop fully. We saw in our own nation that it took time to fully develop where we were a country of 'justice for all,' an inclusive country.”
Bush cited Cuba, Burma, North Korea and Zimbabwe yesterday as examples of countries where people live “in captivity and fear and silence,” but said his current focus was on the Middle East.
One-fifth of the world's population subscribes to the Islamic faith, Bush said, and that is not inconsistent with democracy. “Democratic progress is found in many predominately Muslim countries — in Turkey, Indonesia and Senegal and Albania and Niger and Sierra Leone. Muslim men and women are good citizens of India and South Africa, the nations of Western Europe and the United States of America. More than half of all Muslims live in freedom under democratically constituted governments,” he said.
There was no immediate response from foreign capitals, possibly because the speech came during evening hours in the Middle East.
Bush insisted that there were reasons for optimism. “In Bahrain last year, citizens elected their own Parliament for the first time in nearly three decades. Oman has extended the vote to all adult citizens. Qatar has a new constitution. Yemen has a multiparty political system. Kuwait has a directly elected national assembly. And Jordan held historic elections this summer.
“Recent surveys in Arab nations reveal broad support for political pluralism, the rule of law and free speech,” Bush said. “These are the stirrings of Middle Eastern democracy, and they carry the promise of greater change to come.”
Shibley Telhami, a specialist in the Middle East at the University of Maryland, told the Washington Post said he believed the president's speech would accomplish “very little, frankly.” Mistrust of the United States, as reflected in recent public opinion polls, is now at the highest levels ever recorded.
Telhami said that while presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton had each declared they would fight for a new era of democracy, “national security concerns have always trumped it, and democracy has always taken a back seat.”
The United States is not pushing President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan to be more democratic “as long as he's helping us,” Telhami said. “The real question is, will the U.S. effort to champion this cause hurt the domestic reformers?”
