41
by the United States, the world’s democratic superpower,
was the first stage in the process of democratization of the
Middle East.
3
While it’s probably too early to judge whether
or not this assumption is correct, the current situation in Iraq
and the Middle East in general does not appear to support
this theory.
In February 2003, the eve of the war in Iraq, George W. Bush
declared an ambitious goal: to transform the Arab countries
into liberal democracies.
4
Many Arab intellectuals interpreted
his words not as a promise but rather as the declaration of
an imperialist campaign aimed at once again subjugating
the Middle East – a campaign they warned of back when
his father was president of the United States.
The process of democratization in Iraq encountered
difficulties the scale and intensity of which took the United
States by surprise. Rather than bring peace and calm to
Iraq, the toppling of the dictator Saddam Hussein begat
waves of violence and an excessive use of force, harming
mainly the civilian population. It also exposed the divisions,
contradictions and conflicts inside Iraq and among the
various components that constitute the Iraqi nation, especially
between Sunnis and Shiites. A bloody struggle between these
two factions became the dominant factor in the Iraqi reality
in wake of the fall of Saddam’s regime, accompanied by
fierce rejection of and opposition to the democratic process,
perceived as an imperialist Western concept.
Through an analysis of Western and Arab philosophy, Uriyah
Shavit describes how an outlook that rejects liberal democracy
and views the United States as a declining superpower has
become the hegemonic viewpoint in Arab societies, and
how this perception contributed to both the survival of the
Arab regimes and the rise of al-Qaeda; and finally, how a
conceptual debate developed into a military confrontation
that is shaping the face of the Middle East today.
5
The main lesson from the book appears to be that the efforts
of theWest to establish democratic regimes in the Middle East
have thus far been a dialogue of the deaf. The paternalistic
attitude assumed by the United States, so lacking in sensitivity
to the unique characteristics of the population and societies
in the Middle East, not only did not lead to the anticipated
democratization process, but in effect caused countries such
as Iraq to decline into bloodshed, and spawned the rise of
extremist Islamic movements such as al-Qaeda and ISIS. If
there is still hope for the process of democratization in the
Middle East, given the costly mistakes that have already
been made and the rivers of blood that are still flowing in
the Middle East, it lies in a more open discourse between
“East” and “West” about the essence of democracy and the
ways to freely implement it in accordance with what the Arab
3 Larry J. Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build
Free Societies Throughout the World (New York, Times Books,
2008), pp 263-266.
4 Diamond, pp. 263
5 Uriyah Shavit, The Wars of Democracy: Arabs and the West since
the End of the Cold War, Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle
Eastern and Africa Studies, 2008
nations themselves desire and for the benefit of the entire
international community. In view of the failure in Iraq, the
Islamic threat and the repudiation by liberal Arab intellectuals,
Shavit concludes, the big winners (for now) are the Arab
regimes that have an organic-essentialist perception, and
their call to preserve the existing order.
6
Unlike imported solutions, such as liberalism or socialism,
whose foreign origins are presented as the major cause
for their failure in the region, the Islamic path is exhibited
as one that in the distant past enjoyed great success,
however, in contrast to the other alternatives, which have
all met with failure, has not yet been tried. The motto of the
Islamic movements “Islam is the solution” exerts a powerful
attraction, especially for young people whose chances of
finding employment, housing or even of getting married
are limited.
7
Apparently, the world’s greatest power has yet to decode
the state of mind in the Middle East, and accordingly, failed
at a mission that could have been the most successful in
human history – the democratization of the Middle East. The
mistake was compounded: on the one hand, the divided and
rifted Iraq was not the best place to start the democratization
process in the Middle East. On the other hand, the United
States’ handling of its affairs in Iraq was not transparent,
and was considered illegitimate because the Iraqis in all
camps refused to accept American authority, and instead
became caught up in the conflicts amongst themselves.
The instability and chaos that ensued in Iraq hastened the
US decision to withdraw without any progress having been
made towards democratization in the country.
Following this move, new actors appeared on the stage:
Islamic extremists, who quickly gained power and began
to assume control over territory and people. In a divided
country waging a bloody civil war, there is always room for
extremists, especially those with military power, knowledge
of the area and its inhabitants and substantial access to
resources. The bottom line is that not only did the American
incursion into Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein
not liberate the country and its citizens from the yoke of
tyrannical rule, they actually made the situation in Iraq even
worse. They unleashed on its citizens civil war, death and
destruction – and with the appearance of extremist Islamic
terrorist organizations on the scene, the terrorism the people
now suffer from is no less horrific than that employed by
Saddam Hussein against them. The United States has
become the enemy of the Iraqi people and the Arab world
as a whole, because its involvement in the Middle East is
perceived as an illegitimate and colonial act, and that it is
using the pretext of democratization to take over the Middle
East and its natural resources.
During my stay in the United States in 2010, I met with more
than seventy experts on the Middle East. They all shared
6 Ibid, pp. 279-280.
7 Meir Litvak, “Introduction,” in Meir Litvak (ed.), Islam and Democracy
in the Arab World, Tel Aviv: Ministry of Education, 1997, p. 16.
