'Democracy promotion' in action

The Nation ran a good column this week on the Israel assault on southern Lebanon, an assault which was disastrous for everyone (Israelis and Lebanese civilians) except for Hezbollah.

A year ago, Lebanon's opposition leader and former prime minister was assassinated and this provoked a popular uprising (called the Cedar Revolution) that forced out Syrian troops, which had been occupying the country for over a decade. The Nation piece reminded readers that when the Cedar Revolution broke out, neo-conservatives seized on it to claim it was a shining vindication of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

The 'liberation' of Iraq was to be only the first step in their so-called democracy promotion efforts. According to them, a democratic Iraq would inspire the rest of the Arab world to rise up and liberate themselves. The Cedar Revolution was supposedly the first manifestation of this.

Ironic then that the Bush administration would be complicit in the destruction of the this country that supposedly vindicated its strategy. The only country in the Arab world which is both democratic and pro-western.

In reality, this demonstrates how democracy promotion was never really an objective of the Bush administration in the first place.

There are three more or less democratically governments in the Arab world. Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian Territories and Iraq.

Lebanon is in ruins and its democratic government seriously destabilized.

The Palestinian Territories face an international embargo because the western world didn't like their democratic choice. The Palestinians learned that having a democracy doesn't mean choosing a government that you want; it means choosing a government that the western world wants. (Of course, the Israelis and Americans consistently undermined the previous, less ideological Fatah government as well, a weakening which lead to that election of Hamas. Yet another policy that backfired.)

Iraq is in civil war.

And then there are repressive dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and Egypt who remain US allies.

Ordinary Arabs look at what's happening in their world, they associate authoritarianism with stability and democracy with destruction, starvation and chaos.

Americans like to equate democracy with freedom and dictatorship with Evil. But the Bush administration's actions is sending the exact opposite message.