Fareed Zakaria is no fan of the GOP and is well known for bashing George W. Bush. However, this article confirms the simple fact that George W. Bush understood the Middle East and he had a brilliant plan to change things. What Zakaria got wrong is that it wasn’t Bush who blew this opportunity, it was Obama.
There was a U.S. president who understood the danger of blind support for Arab dictators, no matter that they were admirably secular in their outlook or willing to jail jihadists or to stay at peace with Israel. He said, “Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe.”
His secretary of state was clearer about the connection, explaining that in the Arab world, “there were virtually no legitimate channels for political expression in the region. But this did not mean that there was no political activity. There was — in madrassas and radical mosques. It is no wonder that the best-organized political forces were extremist groups. And it was there, in the shadows, that al-Qaeda found the troubled souls to prey on and exploit as its foot soldiers in its millenarian war against the ‘far enemy.’ ”
That was George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice. The fact that Bush’s administration so botched its remedy — regime change and occupation of Iraq — should not blind us to the fact that it accurately diagnosed the problem. The Arab world provides no easy answers, trapped as it is between repressive dictators and illiberal democrats. But that does not mean that blindly supporting the autocrats is the right answer.
Zakaria omits the part where Iraq was stable and secure when Bush left office. While Maliki was not ideal, he was a lot better than the alternatives and he was working with the U.S. Iraq was holding elections and was on its way to becoming a true democracy. The leader was nowhere near as important as the system itself. That is the whole point of a democracy. We get good leaders, we get bad leaders, we get terrible leaders, but we don’t get dictators and all leaders eventually lose power. For example, Harry Reid just announced that he will not seek re-election. (Ok, stop clapping and read the rest of this.)
As soon as Bush left office and Maliki realized Obama was just going to leave, he quickly aligned himself with Iran. Bush’s dream of a constitutional democracy in the Middle East that would have been a beacon of hope to the entire world was just thrown away. Obama viewed Iraq as the unnecessary war. He could not have been more wrong. Zakaria at least got the point. That alone is a minor miracle. The question is whether or not anyone in either party is listening.
TDM