Take That Anti-War Liberals!

Jamie Kirchik offers up what's got to be the least convincing attack on non-neoconservatives ever:

The Mauritanians' success--notably, on their own terms and with little foreign intervention--at establishing the basis of a democratic society in a country that formally outlawed slavery only in 1980, should serve as a challenge to those who claim that democracy is bound to fail in the Arab and Muslim world. Now Iraqis and others can look to the west coast of Africa for an example of Arab liberalism in action.

Where to start? Well, for one thing, it's always great to see a promising election in a troubled developing country. But, obviously, a lot of troubled developing countries have held promising elections over the decades, and there's hardly any guarantee here that Mauritania is now on a glide path to liberty. Beyond that, we're really taking the essentialism of the "Arab liberalism" concept to extreme examples here. Why, exactly, would events in Mauritania prove anything to Iraqis given that the two countries are thousands of miles apart and feature unrelated social conditions?

Also, I don't know how many times this needs to be repeated, but absolutely nobody opposed the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that it's intrinsically impossible for Arabs or Muslims to hold elections. That Arabs are capable of doing so, and that in all likelihood at some point we'll see genuine stable democracies in the Arab world, says really nothing at all about the wisdom of efforts to use military coercion to transform totalitarian states into democratic ones.

Comments

Not to mention the whole part about having it done all by themselves. Maybe if they had also got invaded and had had democracy imposed at gunpoint 10 years ago they'd be a superpower by now. And all of them would have a pony. And a flying car.

That particular bit of irony was lost on the author, and apparently on Matthew too, but I won't hate you for that.

Posted by El Cruzado | May 1, 2007 3:50 PM

Among the myriad flawed neocon "ideas", the one that seemed the most flawed to me was the idea that installing a democratic regime in Iraq would have some sort of domino effect on the region. It was never spelled out in any detail how this magical transformation would happen. It was just assumed that a democratic Iraq would provide an example that would be impossible for neighboring countries not to imitate.

Unfortunately, since Iraq will not become a successful democracy, we will never be able to disprove this, the stupidest of the many stupid neocon ideas. And we can count on the neocons maintaining, till their dying days, that, if only Iraq had been successful, the entire Middle East would have been transformed.

Posted by Jim W | May 1, 2007 3:54 PM

Despite the repeated rightwing claims that lefties don't believe Arabs can be democratic, I hear the disparagement of Iraqis mainly from the right. Fox pundits and newspeople (Gibson and O'Reilly, recently) calling them "savages" and not caring if they kill each other. The "strategy" of "More rubble, less trouble."

And the glib dehumanization of Arabs --all that seems to come from the neocons and conservatives now, not the left.

Posted by blatherskite | May 1, 2007 3:58 PM

Also, I don't know how many times this needs to be repeated, but absolutely nobody opposed the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that it's intrinsically impossible for Arabs or Muslims to hold elections.

"Absolutely nobody" is too strong in this context. It's true that I've never seen anyone take the position in print, but that's probably because it's a blatantly racist argument, not because "absolutely nobody" believes the folks in that part of the world are barbaric savages.

None of that changes the fact, of course, that Bush and other war supporters often speak as though the racist argument was the ONLY argument ever deployed in opposition to their democracy-spreading project, because it's a lot easier to knock that one down than to deal with some of the other, more persuasive arguments out there.

Posted by Steve | May 1, 2007 4:05 PM

"Why, exactly, would events in Mauritania prove anything to Iraqis given that the two countries are thousands of miles apart and feature unrelated social conditions?"

Well duh, Matt, they're all Ay-rabs, after all. Remember, this is Marty Peretz's protege.

Posted by Dan Miller | May 1, 2007 4:08 PM

Matt, Do you really believe that the goal of Bush and his supporters (as distinct from the goals of the liberal hawks who supported the war) was to promote democracy or any other liberal value? It seems like you and other Bush critics regularly concede this point, when it couldn't be more evident from the record that he has nothing but the sheerest contempt for liberal values of any kind.

Posted by David J. Balan | May 1, 2007 4:09 PM

Also, I don't know how many times this needs to be repeated, but absolutely nobody opposed the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that it's intrinsically impossible for Arabs or Muslims to hold elections.

Well, I don't know how many times THIS needs to be repeated, but your Lindsay Beyerstein link is still broken. But despite repeated repititions, you still haven't fixed it. So I guess you and Kirchik can relate to a degree.

Posted by strannix | May 1, 2007 4:49 PM

The Mauritanians' success--notably, on their own terms and with little foreign intervention--at establishing the basis of a democratic society in a country that formally outlawed slavery only in 1980

yet, strangely, whenever there's a discussion or an expose of the slavery or the slave trade that still exists today , the name Mauritania almost always comes up.

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | May 1, 2007 5:00 PM

Lord knows Kirchick has placed too much faith in elections before....
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/13169
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/13047

"You have naysayers who say Iraq is Vietnam, which is a claim that is particularly absurd," Kirchick said. "The fact that it was an election, the fact that people would still go out to polls, brave bombs and gunfire just to put a ballot in a box, is the [strongest] psychological message to the terrorists."

"People who didn't get ink, didn't do so because they are bitter towards Bush," Kirchick said. "They can't bring themselves to rejoice for a moment that I consider as big as the crumbling of the Berlin Wall or the Tiananmen Square uprising, a moment that signifies success for Bush and for this country, I think."

Posted by Former YDN reader | May 1, 2007 5:05 PM

The odd thing to me is that the group that does think arabs are bloody savages, the LGF people, are the same people who ardently support the war, and presumably the aim of the war. Their theory is, I think, that by spreading the world that Islam is a religion of terror and Arabs are funny monkeys, and at the same time supporting robust majoritarian rule, we will show the Middle East that they have nothing to fear from us - as we have lost our mind. It is the unique, I'm Igor, and I'm freakin' myself out! strategy.

Posted by roger | May 1, 2007 5:19 PM

Matt, Do you really believe that the goal of Bush and his supporters (as distinct from the goals of the liberal hawks who supported the war) was to promote democracy or any other liberal value?

Not really. Or, at least, I guess I think Bush thinks "promoting democracy" is equivalent to "putting people Bush likes in positions of power."

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | May 1, 2007 5:36 PM

That Arabs are capable of doing so, and that in all likelihood at some point we'll see genuine stable democracies in the Arab world, says really nothing at all about the wisdom of efforts to use military coercion to transform totalitarian states into democratic ones.

That's downright Burkean.

Posted by James | May 1, 2007 5:51 PM

The odd thing to me is that the group that does think arabs are bloody savages, the LGF people, are the same people who ardently support the war, and presumably the aim of the war.

It makes me believe that the actual (though unstated) goal is to spill blood in the region- let 'em know we mean business

Posted by Dan | May 1, 2007 6:00 PM

It would be a good idea for us to establish a functioning democracy here in the USA before going out and trying to beat the rest of the world over the head with our form of government.

Posted by global yokel | May 1, 2007 6:05 PM

This bulbous oaf is richer than his breakfast cheesecake. I think you'll find, matty, that just about every transition from totalitarian to democratic state was achieved in a significant part by "military coercion"(to use your clumsy phrase).

The racial component of liberals rejection of the iraq war that Kirchik alludes to is important. The new progressives such as yourself also harbour a belief in the new eugenics. In its diagnosis of the 'problem' it is the same as that of your racist heroes like woodrow wilson. Where it differs is that instead of aiming to wipe out non whites, contemporary progressives advocate the use of state power to compensate for their inherent deficiences.

Posted by pimp hand strikes! | May 1, 2007 6:05 PM

What's with the sloppy racialist thinking? Mauritania is 4000 miles from Iraq. I doubt that their dialects of Arabic are even mutually intelligible.

Posted by chris | May 1, 2007 6:23 PM

...instead of aiming to wipe out non whites, contemporary progressives advocate the use of state power to compensate for their inherent deficiences.

To accomplish hypocrisy in so few words... impressive.

Posted by Dan | May 1, 2007 6:23 PM

their inherent deficiences.

I like that. And liberals are the ones with racist heroes.

Posted by tequila | May 1, 2007 6:32 PM

Before the war, Bush and the Republicans promised us that once Saddam Hussein was removed, a power vacuum would be created in Iraq. From this power vacuum, a pro-American secular liberal democracy would spring. It would happen very quickly, and our troops would leave in a matter of months. And then lots of other nations in the region would adopt pro-American secular liberal democracies as well. We didn't have to do too much to make this happen; it would pretty much happen when Saddam was deposed.

Many rational people thought this was an insane promise to make to the American people. But, um, few of them thought the thing that made this idea insane was some genetic flaw in people of Arab descent. There were plenty of obvious reasons to think this idea was insane; rational people didn't have to invent racist ones.

OTOH, the people who are now bringing up racist explanations for why a secular pro-American liberal democracy has failed to magically spring up in Iraq are, overwhelmingly, the same non-rational people who failed to notice the obvious reasons it would not.

From the get-go, there was no reason to expect a secular pro-American Democracy would magically spring up overnight in Iraq. There were thousands of reasons to expect why it would not. It's blatantly racist to suggest, at this late hour, that the outcome of Bush's mad plan rests in any significant measure on whether or not Arabs are genetically equipped to "handle" Democracy.

That's not the hypothesis we were testing. We were testing whether hope & fantasies could substitute for a well-executed reality-based plan. It turns out they can't.

Posted by anonymous | May 1, 2007 6:52 PM

is there a reason you can never spell Kirchick's name correctly? considering how much you rag on him, it might make sense to figure that out first.

Posted by spell check | May 1, 2007 9:02 PM

Am I the only one here who -- based on the evidence to date -- suspects that pimphandstrikes! is deeply in love with Matthew Yglesias?

Posted by ArgleBargle | May 1, 2007 10:02 PM

Now that democracy in Mauritania is all of five weeks old, we can rest assured.

For anyone less credulous than a Weekly Standard subscriber, here is part of the War Nerd's description of Mauritania:

"Of course, slavery's outlawed in Mauritania. In fact, according to one account I read, "Slavery has been outlawed several times." I guess you just can't outlaw slavery too often. It makes the Westerners happy, and of course it never trickles down to the actual slaves.

"You might as well try to bring back the 55mph limit on I-5. Slaves are just about the only natural resource this landscape produces; outlaw them and the Mauritanian economy would grind to a halt.

"The real point of outlawing slavery early and often is that it keeps the Western aid flowing. Those guilt-ridden rich countries give every man, woman and child in Mauritania about $170 per year. Not that it actually reaches those poor peasants. It stays in the pockets of the airport managers and government ministers, where it belongs."

http://www.exile.ru/2005-September-23/you_want_anarchy.html

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 1, 2007 11:46 PM

Olenka Frenkiel in the UK Spectator reports from Mauritania on something so bizarre it didn't even make the War Nerd column:

RACE AND CULTURE: Forced to be fat

Mauritania

Strange place. And the strangest of missions. While the UN warns of famine, I am driving through the Sahara in search of fat ladies. ... Yet female obesity, not starvation, is what’s killing the women of Mauritania.

A doctor in the town of Kifa examines a woman in her thirties weighing in at 18 stone. ‘Most of the women here are obese,’ he says. ...

‘You won’t see the really severe cases,’ he tells me. ‘They cannot get on to a camel or into a car. I have had women carried in on a blanket and rolled along the floor into my consulting room.’

What has brought this on? Not the junk foods that have fattened Westerners, though they are on their way and will compound the problem once Mauritania’s off-shore oil receipts start flowing this December. Here chronic obesity starts with the tradition of gavage — the force-feeding of girls from seven years old.

‘I was force-fed as a child,’ one woman tells me. ‘We all were. We thought it was good, that we would marry well. Now fashions have changed.’ Why do they do it? Force-feeding in this highly stratified, tribal, Islamic society comes from a mixture of cultural legacies which have conspired to fatten, immobilise and disable the women of Mauritania’s ruling tribes, the White Moors.

This is a country the size of France with fewer than three million people. Mostly desert, it’s where the Arabs once came to trade in the region’s most lucrative commodity: African slaves. Long after the rest of the world had banned the trade, Mauritania’s White Moors refused to give it up. It’s now been officially abolished at least three times, the last in 1980. Old habits die hard and although the word ‘slavery’ is now taboo, little black housemaids still grace many homes. For the women of the ruling tribes, to be fat is still a sign of being rich enough to be indolent and own slaves...

Like slavery, it’s all officially in the past, but one in ten Mauritanian girls are still force-fed according to independent estimates. Getting fat without Western food is long, hard work. A small child has to be forced to drink vast, unnatural quantities of milk — three or four litres of cow or camel milk — every night for years. The milk is mixed with couscous and water to swell the stomach. She is given marbles to play with to keep her still, she cannot play sports, ride a bike or run around, and older women supervise, ensuring the milk stays down. They clamp the child’s fingers and toes between sticks to stem the vomiting reflex by distracting the child with a little local pain. Often the girls vomit violently...

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 1, 2007 11:54 PM

There's a vast difference between freeing yourselves from a dictator and having that dictator taken out by a massive invasion replete with shock and awe.

Support for dissident iraqis such as was given to OTPOR in Yugoslavia is a more proper way to assist people in overthrowing a despot.

Posted by Kija | May 2, 2007 1:19 AM

mds:

Or, at least, I guess I think Bush thinks "promoting democracy" is equivalent to "putting people Bush likes in positions of power."

Hmm, that would actually be consistent with all of these democracy promoters cheerleading for the Turkish military to block the likely outcome of a democratic election.

Posted by mds | May 2, 2007 9:39 AM

Posted by mds | May 2, 2007 9:40 AM