Bush’s Alleged Democracy Goal in Iraq

Another important liberal spokesperson for the notion that Bush was pursuing democracy has been George Packer, who like Ignatieff writes often for the New York Times , is a regular in the New Yorker and published a book on Iraq policy in 2005, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq . Like Ignatieff, Packer rests his case exclusively on Bush’s word: “No one should doubt that he and his surviving senior advisers believe in what they call the ‘forward strategy of freedom,’ even if they’ve had to talk themselves into it…. Bush wants democratization to be his legacy. So when his critics, here and abroad, claim that his rhetoric merely provides cynical cover for an American power grab, they misjudge his sincerity and tend to sound like defenders of the status quo” ( New Yorker , January 7, 2005). Given that he doesn’t offer an iota of evidence for this claim or tell us how he measures “sincerity” or stop to analyze what Bush might mean by “democracy” and what kind might satisfy his new dedication, Packer tends to sound like a gullible apologist and willing executioner for “an American power grab.” 

Like Ignatieff, Packer doesn’t discuss any structural factors or anything else affecting U.S. foreign policy and he is even more obscurantist that Ignatieff, who at least mentions that historically the United States has often supported tyrannies and that the turn to “democracy promotion” has been recent—Packer ignores both the power structure and history. He repeatedly asserts that this is a “war of ideas,” with freedom versus tyranny the issue, again without the slightest attempt to examine whether material interests might be the driving force with ideas providing the cover. He never tries to explain why the war of ideas doesn’t extend to policy toward Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Israel, and why with ideas so decisive these countries can be exempted from democracy promotion, while “democracy” is aggressively promoted in Iraq and the Ukraine. It’s odd that Bush should literally invade Iraq and threaten to invade Iran to “promote democracy,” but in cases like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt not only doesn’t he invade, but he actually provides economic aid and/or military protection to undemocratic regimes. 

There is also the question of reconciliation of democracy promotion abroad with Bush’s steady erosion of democracy at home. In his book The Fight Is For Democracy Packer acknowledges that under increasing business domination and pressure democracy is “atrophying” in the United States itself, but he fails to address the problem of consistency and the challenge this atrophying poses to the sincere and passionate desire of Bush to promote democracy abroad. Could his desired legacy be democracy abroad and authoritarianism at home? 

As regards Iraq, what if the Iraqi people reject us and, in fact, want us out badly enough to develop a formidable resistance to the occupation? Packer never addresses this question directly, but the whole tone of his work suggests that it is acceptable to impose a regime on a country by violence if it has a dictatorial government. At one point Packer implies that the idea of “America’s divine right of intervention” is a “bad idea” (“Wars and Ideas,” New Yorker , July 5, 2004), but in reference to Iraq Packer swallows that divine right, given the badness of the Saddam regime. The blatant violation of international law and implicit abandonment of the rule of law doesn’t disturb him, given the provocations and his implicit faith in U.S. motives—and that divine right can apparently be rationalized no matter what the consequences. Any difficulties are a product of an unfortunate mismanagement and perhaps an unappreciative and recalcitrant population. 

In carrying out this crusade for those Iraqis, we have been responsible for the death of several hundred thousand civilians, and deaths have grown in close relation to the character and scale of U.S. intervention. Is it not cynical—or stupid—apologetics to demand more self-generating violence allegedly on behalf of the victims? What kind of hypocrite could prate regularly about “genocide” in Bosnia— which Packer refers to repeatedly—where perhaps 100,000 were killed on all sides while asking for still more violence on the part of his own government in Iraq where the civilian total has already greatly exceeded the “genocidal” total in Bosnia? 

For Packer, “The hard question isn’t whether America should try to enlarge the democratic order but how.” The role of critics of Bush should be “not to scoff at the idea of spreading freedom but to take it seriously—to hold him to his own talk.” In short, with Packer we are dealing not with a “cynical” apologetics for a power grab, but with a muddled apologetics that can’t get its lines straight and can’t face up to serious political or historical analysis and evidence. Again, that the New York Times and New Yorker can swallow such tripe tells us a lot about the political culture (Packer has had 30 bylined items in the New York Times , 26 in the New Yorker ). 

Ignatieff and Packer are surely not alone. The notion that democracy is the Bush objective in Iraq pervades the New York Times and mainstream media in general, although for the most part it is just taken as a premise, without the padding, windbaggery, contradictions, and evasions that make Ignatieff’s and Packer’s treatment of the issue look so foolish. Of course, the right wing takes the democracy objective as obvious. Robert Kagan even puts it sarcastically—“America support democracy, how novel” ( Financial Times , December 6, 2006)—and Andrew Sullivan states that the neoconservatives “fought a war to construct a democratic polity in Iraq” ( Sunday Times [London], July 23, 2006). It is standard procedure across the board: Stanley Hoffmann speaks of civilian leaders in the Pentagon with “hopes for building a democracy in Iraq that would somehow serve as a model for other governments in the Middle East” (“Out of Iraq,” New York Review of Books , October 21, 2004) and Orlando Patterson writes a long commentary piece in the New York Times to show “the folly of forcing freedom on those who don’t want it” (“God’s Gift?” December 19, 2006), with no attempt whatsoever to show that the forcing of “freedom” was a real objective or that those benighted Iraqis wouldn’t want it if it was really an offer. 

Of course Thomas Friedman swallows this as a premise, finding that “the post-9/11 democracy experiment in the Arab-Muslim world is being hijacked” (“The Kidnapping of Democracy,” NYT , July 14, 2006), and the Times editors regularly invoke the democracy objective: “Washington” is always aiming “to build a peaceful, democratic and unified Iraq that could survive without American troops” (ed., “The Road Ahead in Iraq,” October 26, 2006), and Times reporters regularly accept that Iraq has a “functioning democracy” and a “democratically elected government” that is threatened and may not survive (Michael Wines, “Democracy Has to Start Somewhere,” NYT , February 6, 2005; Michael Gordon, “Bombs Aimed at G.I.’s in Iraq Are Increasing,” NYT , August 16, 2006). But throughout the media there is that “push for democracy” (Paul Richter, “Mideast Allies near a state of panic,” Los Angeles Times , December 3, 2006); that “high-profile push for democracy” (David Morgan, “U.S. seen retreating from democracy push,” Reuters, October 12, 2006). 

Edward S. Herman is an economist, media critic, and author of numerous articles and books, including Triumph of the Market (South End Press).