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| Secular Democracy: On the Retreat |
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Issue 4: The US agenda in the Islamic world is not to ultimately spread liberty but to protect US vital interests and prevent radicals from coming into power.
The neo-conservatives have constantly dismissed opponents of their position as supporters of the status quo and apologists for tyrants and dictators. The latter camp known as the 'realists' respond that the West cannot preach and impose its values on every country and that stability through support of dictators is necessary to prevent even worse elements from coming into power. However, though George Bush and the neo-conservatives fundamentally disagree with the decades-old policy of stability over liberty, in another sense they are actually much closer to the 'realists' than they think. This is because both groups believe in the supremacy of achieving the vital interests of the United States. Now this may seem like motherhood and apple pie but there is an important point to be made here. In pursuing an agenda for liberty, the neo-conservatives do not pursue the spread of liberty in the Middle East as an end in itself. For them the end objective is not ultimately a better life for the Iraqis or the Afghans; these are merely tactical successes on a road to the bigger strategic gain of achieving stability, security and prosperity for the United States. This distinction matters for two main reasons.
Firstly, the value of foreign life is lessened in the eyes of the US administration as better governance and quality of life for non-Americans is not the end goal. US politicians, including the President, have constantly justified the war to the American public on the basis that it is better to fight terrorists in Baghdad than in New York or Washington. But the question is better for whom; certainly not for the people of Iraq who have seen their country become a ravaged battlefield (and where the numbers of civilians being killed is not even worthy of being recorded by the occupying power).This may be a ruse to shift the frontline in the 'war on terror' from the US mainland to the Middle East, but it certainly is dishonest to do this under the guise of spreading liberty.
Secondly, in evoking perpetual war all across the world in the name of liberty and international humanitarian concern, the US government effectively hides its real agenda of naked imperialism. The idea that the US would invest $300 billion in Iraq, risk military overstretch or be willing to incur 12,000 dead and wounded merely to give foreigners a better life strains credulity. Most empires in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries justified their occupation on the basis that they were 'a civilising influence', improving the lot of the natives they were invading. The British Empire claimed that they were bringing a higher and more modern civilisation to the backward natives of Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Cheap labour, low cost commodities and access to markets were the real business of empire and economic interests remains the real agenda for the United States.
The threat to the achievement of the US vision is that alternative forces will bring down the current status quo; a status quo of US supported dictators and monarchs. To prevent the radicals from inheriting the thrones (something which is more likely under authoritarian regimes), a new paradigm is needed in the Middle East to ensure that the radicals do not threaten America's vital interests. Pseudo elections under carefully managed political processes are to be the new approach, promoting an illusion of opening up societies while keeping a tight grip on who can actually come to power. The models are already there with Musharraf in Pakistan and Karzai in Afghanistan; Iraq and Egypt will inevitably follow the same route. As Seamus Milne said recently in an article "The dictators remain in place by US license, which can be revoked at any time - and managed elections are being used as another mechanism for maintaining pro-western regimes rather than spreading democracy.'
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