"HAWKING" DEMOCRACY

This appeared the other day in Long Island's Newsday. (It may be a short-lived link, open for free only until Newsday archives it.) I thought it deserved some attention:

Destiny not in Iraqis' hands

U.S. intervention is to blame for the war-torn country's inability to select its new president

BY CAROLYN EISENBERG
Carolyn Eisenberg is a professor of history at Hofstra University and the author of "Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany."

March 31, 2005

Now, to the big piece:

Two months past the dramatic day when millions of brave Iraqis lined up to vote, the country still lacks a functioning government.

Progress has been halted by the inability to select a new president and two vice presidents, who would together designate a prime minister. Whenever this demoralizing logjam is finally broken, it is important to recognize that the real source of failure resides in Washington and not Baghdad.

And she will now proceed to explain just how. But first, the required set-up:

Americans are eager to believe that we have set Iraq on the road to freedom. How else to justify the deaths of more than 1,500 of our troops, the 10,000 wounded, the numerous veterans who are returning to their families with anguished memories that will shadow their lives? It is not surprising that the recent election resonated so widely here in the United States or that many critics of the Bush administration have been silenced.

Yet, since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the ability of the Iraqis to shape their own political destiny has been compromised by U.S. interventions. While hawking democracy, the Americans have not trusted Iraqis to choose the right leaders or to enact the right laws.

The set-up complete -- shallow Americans, who just don't get how the Iraqi democracy is false; that it is all an illusion -- we get the "hawking democracy" in general snide aside.

"Hawking" being, after all, a bad thing.

Evidently, though, it would be much better if we "hawked", say, dictatorship, mass murder, death camps and head slicings.

Hence, their endless tinkering with the machinery of governance, their unilateral promulgation of 100 laws under the Coalition Provisional Authority, and their imposition of an "interim constitution" that now constrains political life.

In recent months, the American press has barely mentioned this "interim constitution" or Transitional Administrative Law, signed in March 2004. Written behind closed doors by American legal experts and handpicked Iraqis, it is this document that has complicated the efforts of elected Iraqi representatives to choose a Presidency Council. The relevant provision requires that the new president and the two deputies must be chosen by two-thirds of the National Assembly.

This may seem innocuous. But it is worth noting that in November, President George W. Bush was returned to office by a mere 51 percent of the voters. What would have been the impact here if the Electoral College or Congress had been required to produce a two-thirds majority in order to install a chief executive?

Innocuous? Hardly. Indeed, demanding 66% might not be a bad idea. However, we hope it is unnecessary. For in the U.S., where democratic institutions are accepted (by most people, anyway), majority rule works.

On the other hand, in a state with much less hold on a democratic tradition, the need, at least initially, to fall back on consensus until the institutions become embedded in the national psyche seems self-evident to most Iraqis, even if not to certain Hofstra history professors.

Indeed, if a new Iraqi government were based entirely on possession of a straight 50.01% majority, one can easily imagine the likes of her carrying on about minorities being shunted aside and the evils that would follow. A basic majority would lead to the alienation of the Kurds, who would try to secede, and the country would fall apart. Also, the Sunni Arabs would be left out in the cold, and therefore the "insurgency" would be bound to go on and on. . .

One can almost see the tsk-tsk phrasing: "This is typical of the Bush administration," she would opine, "which was elected for a first time with a mere 51 percent of the vote. It ignores the vital need to codify the protection of minority rights, but instead arrogantly projects Americans' experience of simple majority rule onto a post-dictatorship land that possesses no recent history of democracy."

A fair rejoinder is that these arrangements are only temporary and that during the next months elected Iraqis will have the opportunity to produce their own permanent charter. But the "interim" document will continue to have an inhibiting effect because of its stipulation that two-thirds of the voters in three of the 18 governates can block ratification of a new constitution.

Some American officials are clearly counting on the friendly Kurds (who not coincidentally control three governates) to prevent unwelcome changes in the final draft. And if, as seems likely, there is no successor framework, the Transitional Administrative Law remains in place, with its many infringements on Iraqi self-determination.

Oh, well, at least she is willing to make allowances.

Anyhow, one rebuttal to that "fair rejoinder" above is how sad it is a history professor utterly fails to recall the following.

While not demanding a 2/3 majority for the election of the executive, the U.S. Constitution is as we know otherwise riddled with a variety of minority protections. It wouldn't have stood a chance of being ratified had such been otherwise.

Okay, ancient history? And not relevant, presumably? So how about 1993-1994, in another bitterly divided, emerging democracy?

In South Africa, a 2/3 majority was deemed necessary to change the post-apartheid constitution. Also, in a country that had been run by an overly centralized, hierarchial state, many powers were devolved to localities and newly created provinces. Two of those new provinces in particular were created to outright satisfy minority concerns -- the Western Cape (which contains the city of Cape Town) had a white and mixed-race (not black) majority, and Kwazulu-Natal (which contains the city of Durban) was dominated by generally anti-ANC Zulus.

So attacking new institutions in Iraq which aim to protect minority concerns, cultivate consensus, and help "grow" a democratic mentality, all on the grounds that such are merely meant to provide cover for a continuing U.S. "occupation" and Washington's grim determination actually to DENY democracy to Iraqis, is specious at best. Even worse, given examples like post-apartheid South Africa, asserting such is either being deliberately, nastily misleading, or simply extremely ignorant.

Of these, none is more consequential than the untrammeled authority of the American military. Technically, the "multinational" force is in Iraq at the request of its government and could be asked to leave. But the command of the troops is clearly vested in U.S. hands. It is the Bush administration that sets the parameters of military operations, deciding where to attack and when, whether to strike from the air or on the ground, how much force is appropriate and what rights are to be accorded civilians.

It is also the Bush administration that sets policy on arrests and writes the rules for interrogations. While the "interim constitution" protects Iraqi citizens from arbitrary treatment by their own government ("Fundamental Rights," Chapter 2, Article 15), it provides no protection from foreign troops. If frightened U.S. soldiers shoot into a home unnecessarily or fire too quickly at a checkpoint, Iraqis cannot hold them accountable.

Having written about post-war Germany, presumably she has bumped into facts about the then evolving role of U.S. forces there, regarding "fraternization" and even U.S. troops being involved in altercations and crimes against Germans? As with such at the time in the late 1940s, Iraq is an ongoing development of today. So, as Germany did, Iraq too changes weekly and monthly.

It should be noted also that until the official end of the Western Allies' occupation of West Germany in 1955 and even beyond, the occupying powers (the U.S., Britain and France) had some say over what the Bonn government might do. As Infoplease succinctly lists:

. . . The occupying powers allowed West Germany considerable autonomy from the start, except in foreign affairs. The three resident High Commissioners could review actions taken by the Bonn government, but in practice they rarely intervened. In 1951, West Germany was given the right to conduct its own foreign relations. In 1952, West Germany, the United States, France, and Great Britain signed the Bonn Convention, in effect a peace treaty, which granted West Germany most of the attributes of national sovereignty. The Paris agreements of 1954, which came into force in 1955, gave West Germany full independence, except that the former occupying powers reserved the right to negotiate with the USSR on matters relating to Berlin and to Germany as a whole. Also, the powers continued to maintain troops in the country. In 1955, West Germany was recognized as an independent country by numerous nations, including the USSR, and it became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, thus solidifying its ties with the West. In the same year, legislation was passed providing for the creation of West German armed forces. . .

And one would assume she also knows that post-war democratic West Germany was created in a distinctly federal manner. (Much as was later to be the case in post-apartheid South Africa, and is now the case in the current building job in Iraq.) Today, its successor the united Germany is also arguably one of the most decentralized national governments on the European continent. The German states have powers much like states of the U.S., and like America's "Reds" and "Blues" German states also have varying political outlooks. (And, again, much as has been the case in post-1994 South Africa, as well as is increasingly obvious, in post-dictatorial Iraq.) The Allies and German democrats hoped such would help keep the new, post-World War II version of German democracy, well . . . democratic. . .

. . . unlike that which had been tried, post-World War I. . .

. . . for everyone knew how that ended up.

By the way, interesting the title of her book: "Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany." I have not read the book, and probably won't. The title is what's intriguing, since a title usually gives away a general hypothesis.

Presumably, since it was an American, urr, "decision" to "divide Germany", the Soviet Union -- then determined to keep the defeated Germany down (and even non-communists can agree it had a fairly good reason for fearing a strong Germany), wishing to impose a Stalinist system wherever the Red Army stood in force and in 1948-49 blockading American/British/French held West Berlin in the hope that the Western Allies would abandon it -- had nothing to do with that division, of course.

Anyway, back to our professor's Newsday piece:

Some might claim these are minor items when set against the shocking brutality of the insurgents. Yet, this assumes that the insurgency exists in a vacuum, unaffected by American behavior - that humiliation at Abu Ghraib, the trauma of nightly bombings, the destruction of entire neighborhoods - do not interrupt the march of freedom.

"Some might claim"? Thus we begin to ascend to nosebleed altitude.

Well, at least she admits the "insurgents" are brutal.

Interestingly, in case she's forgotten, those "insurgents" who were members of the Baathist regime were even more brutal when they helped "govern" Iraq prior to March 2003.

Eh, but minor too, that fact, right?

Oh, and she jammed in Abu Ghraib. I was wondering if she'd forget. . .

Incidentally, of course the main motivation for the overnight attack on Abu Ghraib by "militants", who as we all know represent freedom-loving ideologies and have always been passionately attached to human rights, can have been only a desire to right any human rights wrongs that occurred within its walls.

In a civics class, Iraq might offer a fascinating case study of how the trappings of democracy, including the moving images of heroic voters, can obscure the machinery of foreign control. But real life is not a civics class. Although our politicians and pundits are ignoring the point, "the new Iraq" remains an occupied land, not a free country. For this reason, our misused troops have been consigned to a mission impossible.

At the very outset, we were told directly that she is an historian. And as such she shares with us her historian's "interpretations". Fine that.

However, in her finishing up on "civics", it is worth noting that since we are not told she is, presumably she is not a "civics" expert -- meaning she is not a political scientist. That makes sense. For if she actually happens to be one, she has a decidedly odd grasp of the fundamentals of democracy and self-governance not only when it comes to the U.S. and postwar West Germany, but also possesses a terrific blind spot about how other new democratic states, like South Africa in the 1990s, might serve as a good example for today's Iraq.

Best of all is the smashing, concluding line -- "our misused troops have been consigned to a mission impossible". Such embodies the spirit of the entire piece, and as innocent newspaper readers we might fairly ask the following: Overall, is the article the handiwork of a "history professor" or a posturing editorialist who cites academic credentials in order to attempt to give her assertions some measure of greater "validity"?

A final, related point. We all know we can easily get "insights" like those she shares with us above from a dizzying myriad of web sites -- especially those of the anti-democracy, anti-freedom bent. In contrast, though, one might choose another route: Hofstra University's 2004-2005's F/T, basic freshman tuition fees were $9,505 a semester, or $19,010 for the entire year.  ¶ by Robert, Sunday, April 03, 2005