On 'Democratizing' the Middle East
By Dr Gerry Lower - 11 June 2003

The Bush administration has claimed victory in deposing Saddam Hussein and 'freeing' the people of Iraq from his despotic rule. Thusly 'liberated,' the competing tribes of Iraq (e.g., Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites) are currently regrouping to fight among themselves for control of everything in Iraq that the US decides not to control.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration is planning to install a 'controlled' democracy in Iraq (the only type of 'democracy' the Bush administration supports). It may well become necessary to intimidate or bomb a few more neighboring tribes into submission, but then the job will be one of watching the wonders of 'democracy' and crony capitalism spread throughout the Middle East to bring freedom and prosperity to all.

Now, hold on here just a moment! What is that plan again...to bring 'democracy' to the Middle East? Is the Bush administration jerking the people around or what? My 75-year old neighbor, Del (who has been far more places and seen far more things than George W. Bush), has been telling me for months that the US does not know what it is getting into in the Middle East, that we short-sighted, that ill-read Americans are simply too naive and self-assured for their own good, that we are in over our heads in a religious world we do not understand.

To begin with, democracy is something that comes from the people of a nation under adequately enlightened leadership, not from a foreign military power in occupation. We in America would be nothing today had we waited for the British to impose 'democracy' upon us. The values of Democracy, in the minds of the men who are carved on Mount Rushmore, come from the human heart and, no doubt about it, the human soul. Democracy is born of human passion for honesty, freedom and fairness and peace. But, despite the passion of our Fathers two centuries ago, one of the more obvious reasons that democracy was actually established in America, and not in Europe, was our physical and intellectual isolation from the monarchical and papal power mongers of Europe.

America was not birthed by a branch office of the Roman Catholic Church but by a small handfull of highly self-educated, highly read, highly thoughtful and highly articulate people who mostly practiced Deism and the belief that God was located on the human inside, of all places. Jefferson, Franklin and Washington rejected supernaturalism and the notion of 'external authority,' accepting instead that fact that causation in life (e.g., disease, poverty, and injustice) is entirely earth-bound. Jefferson and friends rejected religious determinism, replacing it with human determinism, they rejected pre-destination, replacing it with education and choice. They were out to create something entirely new by eliminating the profoundly uninspired religiosity traditionally driving Western culture and currently driving US imperialism in the Middle East. Here is why they wanted to remove religion as a basis for further thought.

Traditional Western religion with its 'one' supernatural god of the 'chosen' few is absolutely tribal and self-centered in nature. From the very beginnings, the Tribes of Israel were regularly having at each other with their differing views of what their god wanted them to be doing collectively. Given the despotic logic of the times, the emphasis was not on finding common ground but on winning, getting one's way. It was only when the Tribes had a common external enemy, more fearsome to the Tribes than the Tribes were to each other that they flourished in religious and nationalistic unity. This is just the way the Western religious world works, my word against yours until we face a common problem. It is an approach that can only work with clean, defined logic and criteria of belief, that is, matters of theology never addressed by Western religion with its basis in faith alone.

If I disagree with you on an issue (although my reasons are entirely self-centered and earth bound), I can perhaps get more leverage if I align my objectives with those of an all-knowing, potentially wrathful god. If you continue to disagree with me, you clearly have an inferior god or no god at all, which I can use to justify my self-righteous dominion over you. If you do agree with me, I will have coerced you into thinking that you are now in alignment with the gods when, in fact, you are only in alignment with me and my agenda. See how this works? Tricky, isn't it?

Just remember that my dad is bigger than your dad and my dad is going to come over to your house and kick your dad's butt. That is, unfortunately, the full extent of Western religion's social maturity, exemplified in the Middle East for millennia. The Bush administration has modernized this primitive manipulation into an art form.

America's Founding Fathers, of course, had hoped to eliminate all of this nonsense because it cannot be dealt with intelligently, because it is nothing but belligerence with a mouth and because it avoids honest confrontation of the actual issues at hand. This mindless approach allows the Bush administration to promote tax cuts one day because the economy is so good and it allows them to promote tax cuts the next day because the economy is so bad. It is, however, an act of utter incompetence and desperation to wrap up one's hopes and dreams for the world in blind religious patriotism. It puts one in the same camp with all other religious enemies of freedom and fairness and equality. Just ask Jefferson about this.

This is not so difficult a concept to grasp. All muddy thinking starts on simple (as in asinine) human ground. All clean thinking starts on simple (as in elegant) human ground. You simply have to get 'simple' (in the elegant sense) and human (in the thoughtful sense) and leave behind the adolescent world of religious superstition and the 'complex' world of crony capitalism. Life has always provided those holding to a scientific worldview with far more to agree upon than not.

With every tribe having its own version of god (designed to protect its own interests over everyone else's), the people end up agreeing upon nothing across tribal boundaries and they devote themselves instead to finding even more upon which to disagree. The predictable historical result is more fractionation, less unification and no human progress. Welcome to the world of Tribes.

Consider Afghanistan and its rule by competing religious tribes. How does one nourish democracy among competing warlords who are not even trying to see through each other's eyes in the interest of the people? Consider Iraq and its rule by competing religious tribes. How does one nourish democracy among the competing Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, each group hoping to control as much of Iraq as possible, never mind the people?

Once again, democracy can only come from the human inside, from the thinking of people who are willing to consider agreeing upon some things, e.g., those human needs and human rights common to all people. It does not happen among self-righteous religious people, does it? After all, these people have had two millennia to get it right, make a little peace in the world, and they haven't even come close.

The point is this. Anyone who believes that democracy can be installed in nations of warring religious tribes by an occupant 'superpower' that has, itself, lost all touch with the values of democracy, well now that is a belief unfit for human consumption, a belief for "fools or charlatans," to use Jefferson's words. "A nation that expects to be ignorant and free is something that never was and never will be." It is simply ignorance incarnate, in this day and age, to claim that god is on your side and no one else's, that god has opted to play favorites just for you. You can cause a lot of trouble and get into a lot of trouble by believing that you are special beyond human compassion and reason.

Under Jefferson's democracy, Americans have chosen to grant themselves freedom of religion. You may believe anything you want about a personal god working 24/7 on your sole behalf at the expense of others. You may believe in anything you damned well please, as long as you do not impose your beliefs on another living soul. This is called freedom of religion and, if honored, it protects you from religious fanatics and despots who would use lies and fabrications to deceive you and control you to enable their own ends, the current Bush administration being a proud exemplar. It is the beauty of the values of democracy, that most educated people do not need convincing of the merit of these values, they just need leadership on their behalf.

Copyright © 2003 by the News Insider and Gerry Lower