UPDATE: Immediately after I completed the entry, I ran off a letter to Steven Den Beste among others. He responded, addressing me properly and in much more erudite words, gave me what I needed to hear: I was panicking needlessly. I've written before about the Bush administration and littleball: they don't swing for the fences but instead tuck little Texas League Singles into shallow outfield, run the bases and score just as easily as they might if they used a slugger who could possibly homer more often than he struck out. A successful political objective, unfortunately, must be agilely carried - which means that the entire statement of "We intend to leave the entire Near East democratized," however noble, is simply impossible to swallow at this point in time when coming from the American vanguard. I'll need to let this settle. But I'll keep the poster up - it's too important a cause not to express my concern.
Could what I had celebrated yesterday been only one statement by a continually diffuse White House?
[White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer] said Bush doesn't have a problem with Iraq being an Islamic state as long as it is a democratic and tolerant one. Officials point to the model of Turkey, a democratic nation run by an elected Islamic party that allows religious freedom. The United States opposes an Islamic dictatorship in Iraq, similar to that seen in Tehran, Fleischer said.
"Doesn't have a problem"? God forbid this comes from Bush. If these are indeed his sentiments I have grave concerns for the future success of democratizing Iraq, should democrats like Ahmad Chalabi fail, as it would be plainly obvious that the administration does not understand the foundations and successful composition of its own government. Theocracy is not a choice; it is not a preference that has simply not caught on in the West. The establishment of religious law as direct authority to governance is poison to religious and, eventually, civil freedoms. Anyone who believes that Christians or whichever end of Islam receives the short straw in an Islamic state - Sunni or Shiite - will escape eventual institutionalized persecution is foolish and should be kept well away from Iraq in these vulnerable years.
Citing Turkey as an example of an "Islamic state" is so ahistorical as to be downright stupid - or duplicitous - or both. The secularization of Turkey was an involved and lengthy process. The caliphate, the seyhülislam, the Muslim hierarchy, the connection between church and state: all were abolished as part of Atatürkism, the great reform movement initiated by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the 1920s. His vision and leadership are precisely what separates Turkey from its corrupt, fascist, extremist, Islamist Muslim neighbors. In fact, the victory of the Islamic party in Turkey's most recent election is being closely watched lest the religious party destroy the freedom of worship from a pulpit in Ankara.
Afghanistan's future depends upon an eventual liberalization that overthrows the Islamic yoke being thrown on it today - nothing more will save it from falling back into its dark-age, homicidal muddle.
There is no such thing as a democratic, tolerant theocracy. If the Bush administration cannot bring itself to adhere to unpopular albeit basal principles of consensual government, it will have failed miserably in its aspirations to liberate the Iraqi people - or anyone else.
This had better be a mistake. I truly hope it is. If it is a mistake, the White House had better call a huddle and refine its language, because it's currently playing with fire.
