In the aftermath of 9/11 most the West’s elites and opinion makers believed Democracy could be exported to the islamic world. People like me, who spoke out against this concept, were called communists, Al-Qaeda supporters and even traitors. When I would express my method of retaliation, which was nation destruction, I would get called a Nazi. Critics of Bush’s “freedom” agenda were silenced and mocked in the Conservative blogosphere. Unfortunately, we have been vindicated but at the loss of 5,ooo American lives and 40,000 wounded in the Afghan and Iraq wars. Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh have turned on the war realizing its uselessness..
Ottowa Citizen columnist, David Warren, admits he was wrong on the concept of exporting Democracy. He had been a supporter of the freedom agenda, but admits it was wrong.
When one cannot trust one’s own allies not to murder one, one is in a fix. It is not an unusual fix, as the history of this planet goes, and particularly the history of Afghanistan. But the circumstances in which two American officers at the Interior Ministry in Kabul lost their lives on Saturday were discouraging. The assailant seems to have been an Afghan police intelligence officer. That says something. That he was able to escape after the shootings says more.
The incident was one of many which followed news of the Koran burnings at the Bagram airfield. That event, from what I can gather, was reported in detail within Afghanistan. I am not being droll here: I mean the fact that the tomes were tossed in the “burn pit” by mistake, having already been defaced by Taliban prisoners who were using them to pass messages, was widely circulated. To the western mind, this should make a difference in the perceived profanation: intention always counts.
But to the mind of many Afghan people, quite capable of stoning a woman to death for adultery after she has been raped, it made no difference. Nor, dare I add, could President Barack Obama’s public apology over the affair make any difference: for it was the kind of profanation for which apologies are not accepted. Obama, consciously doing “the right thing” to defuse tensions, is consistently out of his depth in dealing with these matters; for despite his own Islamic background in Kenya, and Indonesia, he is a product of Ivy League America. George W. Bush would have done the same.
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As it is the 29th of February, let me perform an uncustomary retraction. Looking back over the history of the last 10 years, through which I have been writing these columns, I’m now persuaded of a major misjudgment. While I supported the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq — still do, and “would do it again” without qualms — I see ever more clearly that the “Bush doctrine” of exporting “democracy” was an unnecessary mistake.
Our interests in these countries were military; we had dangerous enemies to destroy. That was achieved with dispatch by U.S. and allied forces: with remarkably few casualties all round. We had a continued interest in preventing the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan, and in the destruction of Islamist cells in Iraq. All fine and good: these were necessary adventures, for the defence of legitimate western interests.
