The Foreign Service Journal, February 2007

Iraqis have voted largely along ethnic lines, should not come as a surprise. Nor does it imply that democracy will fail. It often takes a few go-rounds for electorates to mature in their choices. The critical question is not whether Islamist parties win, but whether free and fair campaigns and balloting will continue to take place. If an election ushers in a new authoritarianism, then it is a hol- low exercise; but repeated contests are likely to serve as an impetus for moderation in the Muslim world, as they do everywhere else. It is true that the Iraq War and other Bush policies have engendered intense anger in the Middle East. But even through clenched teeth, Middle Easterners are echoing the question that Bush has put: When all of the rest of the world’s regions are growing more democratic, why should the Middle East be different? Explore Different Approaches For the remainder of his term, Bush should not flag in the oratory of freedom that has been his hallmark. Although the man has no gift for language, he has chosen great speech writers and has delivered powerfully inspiring words on this subject. He must continue to offer those words of encouragement, making sure that the message is echoed in public and private throughout the U.S. govern- ment. At the same time, we don’t want to butt heads with friendly autocrats in places like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia so severely that we help them to be overthrown, as we did with the shah of Iran. Revolution is rarely the friend of democracy. But we should be bringing steady pressure to bear in support of continuous political liberal- ization. We should also continue to increase our aid to propo- nents of democracy and good governance around the world. As a general rule, helping indigenous reformers is even more important than squeezing the rulers. However, the people we want to assist are often under- standably leery of leaving themselves open to the charge of being American stooges. The best way we have to con- tend with this dilemma is by channeling U.S. assistance indirectly through the National Endowment for Demo- cracy, which itself is a step removed from the U.S. gov- ernment and often relies on nongovernmental organiza- tions as conduits. Another approach would be to interna- tionalize democracy assistance by pooling resources from various democracies in a common fund. Send More Troops to Iraq The hope that Iraq could be made into a democratic model for the region has gone by the wayside. Even in a best-case scenario, under which violence eventually sub- sides and a tolerable government takes hold, there is no hope that others in the region will look to Iraq as some- thing to emulate. Nonetheless, we must try to assure such an outcome. The alternative, an American retreat from Iraq in defeat, however camouflaged, would be catastrophic. It would lead not only to greater mayhem there (perhaps spilling across the borders), but also to dire consequences for Americans at home. A U.S. defeat in Iraq would be like a course of steroids for jihadists everywhere. They would feel vindicated in the conviction that they are fol- lowing the will of Allah, their struggle having been blessed with victory, first over one infidel superpower in Afghanistan, and now over the other in Iraq. Millions would flock to their ranks. Every Western-friendly gov- ernment in the region would be shaken, and terrorist attacks in America and Europe would multiply. The gov- ernments of Iraq’s neighbors, who argued against our invasion, now argue against our retreat. Blame Bush (or his supporters, like me) all you want for having gotten us into Iraq, but that does not diminish the terrible conse- quences of an American surrender now. That our options in Iraq are not good was brought home by the indigestible goulash known as the Iraq Study Group report. It proposes a gradual retreat, apparently regardless of consequence. This, as military leaders have hastened to point out, is a formula not only for abandon- ing Iraq to its bloody fate but also for increasing American casualties, because it would leave a force that is insuffi- cient to protect itself. The hopelessness of this course of action is inadver- tently admitted in the commission’s proposal to facilitate our retreat by securing the cooperation of Iran and Syria in stabilizing Iraq. Why would Syria, and especially Iran, whose national slogan is “death to America,” want to help us? Because, say James Baker and Lee Hamilton, the co- chairs of the ISG, “they share an interest in avoiding the horrific consequences that would flow from a chaotic Iraq.” Well, if Tehran and Damascus fear such an out- come, they sure have found funny ways of showing it for the past four years. More realistically, the report’s authors may hope that we could strike a deal. And perhaps we can. But what is F O C U S F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37