With President George W. Bush, we had a president who made sweeping promises about the importance of fostering democracy around the world, to the point that many of his speeches reminded listeners to the utopian goals of Woodrow Wilson. Unfortunately, Bush and his advisors had no clue about the challenges facing those trying to bring democracy to places like the Middle East. Just as in Iraq, lofty goals were not backed up with preparation or hard work. Instead we had utter incompetence.
Joe Klein reports the following from the U.S,-Islamic World Forum in Doha:
The distress was deeper than exhaustion. Many of the Muslim delegates seemed stunned, finally, by the rush of history unleashed by the Bush Administration. “Everything the United States has favored is now radioactive, especially democracy,” said Rami Khouri, a Lebanese journalist. The Administration had pushed for elections in places like the Palestinian territories where the essential components of democracy—a free press, a free economy, the rule of law—did not exist. Religious parties had won, or gained momentum, in most of these elections, and the U.S. had backtracked, refusing to accept the Hamas victory in the Palestinian territories, re-embracing autocrats like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. “Our indigenous democratic reformers,” Khouri said, “are in retreat across the region.”
This isn’t about conservative or liberal foreign policy. It’s about common sense. Conservatives like George Will and Pat Buchanan saw the folly of Bush’s policies, as did liberals like Ted Kennedy. The greatest tragedy is that real efforts to bring democracy to the world have been set back by this administrations incompetence.
