Two years ago, President Bush heralded the Iraqi elections as an event constituting a momentous step toward victory in Iraq. While our venture into Iraq was misguided from the start, when this administration began to view democracy as a means to peace, it became more evident that we have truly lost our way.
During the 2005 State of the Union Address, President Bush said, “We are in Iraq to achieve a result: a country that is democratic, representative of all its people, at peace with its neighbors, and able to defend itself. And when that result is achieved, our men and women serving in Iraq will return home with the honor they have earned.” The president was misguided into believing that a democratically elected government is synonymous with liberty and freedom. While many free and open countries practice democracy, it would be overly simplistic to thereby assume that their liberties are a result of their democracy. Numerous Middle Eastern countries hold democratic elections to choose their leaders, yet they remain brutal and repressive. In 2006, the militant terrorist organization Hamas was swept into power during the democratic Palestinian elections. Egypt is also democratic, yet is still brutally repressive. Most ironic, however, is Iran. Just this week, White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley said that an attack against Iran is not out of the question. Of course we all recall in 2002 when President Bush included Iran in the “Axis of Evil.” Unfortunately, President Bush’s logic encountered a fault when we realized that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected in a landslide during the country’s 2005 elections.
As the two year anniversary of Iraq’s Parliament approaches, it has become readily apparent that democracy and violence are not mutually exclusive. President Bush’s inability to stabilize the country after the invasion lead to a chilling report this week from the U.N., which concluded that more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians were violently killed during 2006. One Iraqi mother was quoted as saying, “I never thought that one day I would have to think about how to keep them alive. Now, when I go out of my house in the morning, I pray to God that when I return, I will see all of them there alive.”
Given this reality, we must now determine how to create some semblance of stability. The White House’s main talking point this week has been: If you don’t like our plan, what’s yours? This message seems to imply that opponents of the war don’t have a plan. In fact, numerous alternatives to the Bush-McCain doctrine exist; most notably, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) calls for a scaled down troop presence within the region. The White House response to the ISG plan has been: Our plan is the only plan that gives us a chance to win. This fails to comprehend the realities of the situation. A recent poll of Iraqi citizens, conducted by the Al Jazeera news network, showed that nearly two-thirds believe that violence would decrease if the U.S. military left the region.
By telling the Iraqi people that peace could be achieved through governmental reform, spurred on by militaristic force, we’ve sold them a bill of goods that we simply cannot provide them. The administration’s continued insistence that democracy is the path to stability is an example of the same narrow thinking that landed us in this situation. It was na’ve of us to believe that democracy was capable of overcoming hundreds of years of sectarian strife. If our agreed upon goal is now to create stability within the region, we must look objectively at all sides, which leads to the inevitable conclusion that our presence within Iraq has become fuel for the fire, and we must do all we can to prevent any further escalation.
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