	Bob Hostetler > Writing

Fomenting Democracy

by Bob Hostetler

Last summer, President Bush stood on the stage at the Republican National Convention and said,

We are working to advance liberty in the broader Middle East, because freedom will bring a future of hope and the peace we all want. And we will prevail.

Our strategy is succeeding. Four years ago, Afghanistan was the home base of Al Qaida. Pakistan was a transit point for terrorist groups. Saudi Arabia was fertile ground for terrorist fund-raising. Libya was secretly pursuing nuclear weapons, Iraq was a gathering threat. And Al Qaida was largely unchallenged as it planned attacks.

Today, the government of a free Afghanistan is fighting terror. Pakistan is capturing terrorist leaders. Saudi Arabia is making raids and arrests. Libya is dismantling its weapons programs. The army of a free Iraq is fighting for freedom. And more than three-quarters of Al Qaida's key members and associates have been detained or killed.

We have led, many have joined, and America and the world are safer.

He went on in that speech to cast a vision that some said (and still say) was naïve and simplistic:

I believe in the transformational power of liberty. The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom.

As the citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq seize the moment, their example will send a message of hope throughout a vital region. Palestinians will hear the message that democracy and reform are within their reach and so is peace with our good friend, Israel. Young women across the Middle East will hear the message that their day of equality and justice is coming. Young men will hear the message that national progress and dignity are found in liberty, not tyranny and terror. Reformers and political prisoners and exiles will hear the message that their dream of freedom cannot be denied forever. And as freedom advances, heart by heart, and nation by nation, America will be more secure and the world more peaceful.

Since that speech (and his State of the Union address in January, in which he said, "America will stand with the allies of freedom to support democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world"), events around the world have made the president's vision look fairly prophetic.

On January 30, on television screens and in newspapers around the world, people saw jubilant Iraqis voting in the first free elections there in decades. Walid Jumblatt, a Lebanese Druze leader who is no fan of America, said recently: "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Berlin Wall has fallen."

Since then, of course, Saudi Arabia held its first municipal elections-a small step, certainly, and not without severe limitations (women, for example, could neither run for office nor vote). But it was a step. Palestinians elected Mahmoud Abbas as Yasser Arafat's successor (in January), a cease-fire soon followed, and (most importantly perhaps) a recent Tel Aviv bombing seemed to produce more uneasiness-even anger-than rejoicing among the Palestinians! Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, announced that he would allow other names on the next ballot rather than only his ("who should I vote for, Mubarak or Mubarak?"), adding that his country would benefit from "more freedom and democracy." And now the assassination of Rafik Hariri in Lebanon has suddenly ignited a (so far) bloodless revolution in that nation, resulting in a partial pullback of Syrian troops, toppling the Syria-backed government, and prompting a promise from Bashar al-Assad to withdraw its 14,000 troops in the next few months.

That amazing and unexpected sequence of events has led the New York Times editorial board (which has previously had no good to say about the president's "simplistic" view of the world) to publish this:

Still, this has so far been a year of heartening surprises - each one remarkable in itself, and taken together truly astonishing. The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances. It boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had any realistic chance. And for all the negative consequences that flowed from the American invasion of Iraq, there could have been no democratic elections there this January if Saddam Hussein had still been in power.

There is little doubt that no one-not even the president-could have foreseen things in the Mideast changing as quickly as they seem to be. And while President Bush certainly has steadfastly cast a cohesive vision for fomenting democracy around the globe (and especially in the Mideast), more credit goes to the courageous people of those nations who are taking up the fight for freedom, themselves. And, of course, there is no way to know where those changes will lead. But the world may soon have cause to rejoice that instead of looking at things the way they are, and asking why, President Bush had the vision and guts-and naiveté, if you wish-to dream of things that never were, and ask, "why not?"

This article appeared in the March 4, 2005 edition of the Hamilton Journal-News.

More articles by Bob Hostetler...