The great project of the Bush administration - the strengthening and spread of democracy - is enjoying considerable success. Most recently, we witnessed the triumph of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which followed the Rose Revolution in Georgia, bringing historic breaks from authoritarianism in two key former Soviet republics. Less publicized were elections in two critical Muslim states - Indonesia and Malaysia - in which Islamic parties were decisively defeated.
Oh good lord. Krauthammer's argument here seems to be that, since Bush has stated his goal as "the strengthening and spread of democracy," any positive democratic development anywhere in the world must therefore be credited to Bush. As Frank Zappa said, "Now, ladies and gentlemen, we have moved beyond mere mumbo-jumbo into the world of mumbo-pocus." George W. Bush deserves about as much credit for Ukraine's Orange and Georgia's Rose Revolutions as he deserves blame for the Asian tsunami. Regarding Indonesia and Malaysia, far from deserving any credit, Bush's ridiculous "I am God's Crusader" rhetoric has if anything strengthened more hard-line elements, and given credibility to claims that democratic reforms are just part of a attempt by the Christian West to destroy Islam.
Up next: As yet more proof that the Bush World Democratic Revolution is working, Krauthammer points to the fact that chicken is tasty.
A comment also about Krauthammer's implied assumption that the defeat of Islamic parties is necessarily a good thing. One should, I think, distinguish between Islamic and Islamist parties. The former term encompasses a variety of both liberal and conservative political approaches. The latter specifically refers to more fundamentalist ideologies. The Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) is Islamist, while Indonesia's Islamic parties, at least the ones that are even mildly competitive, are not.
I think it's a good thing that hard-line Islamist parties are kept out of power, but it's important to understand that one of the main reasons why such parties enjoy as much support as they do is that religious parties were for many years barred from elections in many Islamic countries, and still are in more than a few, a situation which has always resulted in the strengthening of the more radical organizations, and at the expense of moderate ones. When religious parties are allowed to compete, as in Indonesia, radical influence tends to be diffused in favor of more moderate alternatives, such as political parties which concentrate less on things like bringing death to the Great Satan and more on things like controlling inflation, lowering unemployment, and getting the trash collected.
Finally, people like Krauthammer should quickly disabuse themselves of the idea that we will ever see a purely secular Western-style politics in the Islamic world. The separation of church and state took centuries to obtain in the West, arose from specific conditions in Europe, and is an idea which is totally alien to Muslims, so it's fantastically silly to think that we could graft this concept onto these societies. That's not to say that there aren't elements of Western-style democracy that I don't consider deal-breakers, such as free, fair, and regularly held elections, women's rights, and protections for religious and ethnic minorities, just that I'm not convinced that these things could not be achieved under a constitutional system which gives preponderant influence to Islamic legal traditions.
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