Bush Doctrine Needs Fixing, Critics Say

Brian Mc Guire, The New York Sun:

The strong showing for Iranian-backed Islamists in last month's Iraqi election and the expected gains by the Islamic terrorist group Hamas in the Palestinian Arab elections scheduled for later this month are prompting backers of the Bush Doctrine of spreading democracy in the Middle East to call for refinements in implementing the policy - but not for its wholesale abandonment. READ MORE

"The Bush Doctrine is correct, but the implementation is lousy," a former staff adviser on Iran and Iraq in the office of the secretary of defense and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin, wrote in an e-mail from Iraq earlier this month. "The U.S. aid projects exist largely on the drawing board, while Iranian-backed parties are giving out welfare from offices spread across southern Iraq."

Another resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Ledeen, called for expanding the democratization push to Iraq's neighbors.

"What I've always said is that you cannot win a regional war by conducting it in just one place," Mr. Ledeen told The New York Sun. "With regard to Iraq, our failure to deal with Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran, and just focus on Iraq by itself was doomed from the beginning. And I said that before we went into Iraq."

Mr. Ledeen, who wrote the 2002 book "The War Against the Terror Masters," said he stands by the Bush strategy of promoting democracy as an antidote to terrorism despite what he regards as its flawed implementation. "I agree entirely that the way to defeat the terror masters is by the spread of Democratic revolution," Mr. Ledeen said. "But you can't do it this way. In the abstract, it's hard to imagine a representative government in Iraq without what we call fundamentalists in it. They are part of the population. They will participate. But that they are radical Islamists who want what Iran wants - that seems to have been avoidable. But only if we fought the broader war. It means supporting the enemies of the Islamic regime of Iran in Iran. My view is that if we supported that from the beginning, the Iraq elections would have been different."

Another scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA specialist on the Middle East, said the ascendance of a religious faction is to be expected even in democratic elections in Iraq and other predominantly Muslim countries.

"I am pretty much of the opinion that for democracy to succeed in the Middle East, it will inevitably include Islamic fundamentalists in the process, if not the cutting edge," Mr. Gerecht said. "It is fair to say that there are those in the Bush administration who are certainly uncomfortable with the fact that religiously defined parties of varying levels of militancy will obviously do better as the democracy grows. But I'm not much discomforted by that, because I think it's an essential part of the process of the collapse of bin Ladenism in the Middle East."

Many of those who have embraced the Bush Doctrine as an antidote to terrorism make a distinction between free elections and free societies. They say that if they have one major criticism of how the doctrine has been implemented, it is the Bush administration's focus on elections above all else. Ron Dermer, who, with an Israeli politician and former Soviet refusenik, Natan Sharansky, co-authored the book "The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror," said the expected success of Hamas in the January 25 election in the Palestinian Authority says more about a lack of freedom among Palestinian Arabs than it does about the effectiveness of the Bush Doctrine.

"I think there are a lot of Palestinians who live in fear and don't express themselves freely, but for one reason or another their survival depends on support for Hamas or the PA," Mr. Dermer said. "I think if the PA was an organization dedicated to improving the lives of people rather than cozying up to terrorist organizations, the whole situation would be different. Hamas's success is a result of continued oppression within Palestinian society."

Mr. Bush has endorsed "The Case for Democracy" as a summary of his thought. Mr. Dermer said he still supports the Bush Doctrine.

"I think if I have any criticism, it's that the whole doctrine has come to mean having elections as soon as possible, and that's not what this is all about," Mr. Dermer said. "I don't want to in any way discount what has happened in Iraq, because I think the amazing thing there is how many people went out to vote. ... But I don't think you want to micromanage change. The important thing is to focus on ensuring that there is more freedom. The focus now has to be not on the composition of the government, but how it treats its own people.Is it working to expand and protect freedom among Iraqis?"

Mr. Dermer said, "The results may not have been exactly what the U.S. wanted, but the question is do you have an increased space for freedom?"

The president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Clifford May, said the Bush Doctrine is better than any of the alternatives.

"I continue to believe that, as a matter of both policy and morality, America should support those in the Middle East who are pro-freedom, pro-Democracy and pro-human rights. That does not guarantee they will succeed," Mr. May said. "But our support for their oppressors is a proven failure, a policy to which we should not revert. Is there another serious alternative?"