Will neo-cons get real?

• Author: Bresler, Robert J.
• Position: STATE OF THE NATION

WHEN PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH DECLARED in his second inaugural address that, "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," he was standing in the tradition of Wilsonian Liberalism. It was Pres. Woodrow Wilson who professed in his World War I declaration address of 1917 that the U.S. was going to war "to make the world safe for democracy." This same rhetoric was repeated by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II as well as by White House occupants Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan during the Cold War. Yet, Bush's declaration was dubbed the Bush Doctrine, as if it were something new.

Pres. Bush has been excoriated by many who would otherwise embrace Wilsonianism for applying such thinking to Iraq and the Middle East. Anti-war advocates who once criticized our alliance with dictators such as the Shah of Iran, Francisco Franco of Spain, and Somoza Garcia of Nicaragua now claim we are foolish to be attempting democracy in Iraq. The inspiring words of Wilson, Roosevelt, and Kennedy are considered arrogant and foolish by contemporary critics when uttered by Bush. Many already have concluded that the seeds of democracy never can be planted in a failed Arab civilization, as the region is to be forever plagued by tribalism, economic backwardness, religious hatred, and contempt for the non-Muslim world. That is a foreboding and dangerous conclusion. It would leave that part of the globe disconnected, perhaps forever, from the economic and political modernization that has blessed North America, Europe, and much of Asia. The region would continue to seethe with hatred, a fertile breeding ground for terrorism and jihad.

Yet, none of the Bush-haters so much as raised a peep when Congress passed, and Pres. Bill Clinton signed, the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. This Act, backed by Congress, stated that the policy of the U.S. should be to support efforts to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power while promoting the emergence of a democratic government. At present, the language and intent of the Iraq Liberation Act have been forgotten. Many critics of the war in Iraq seem to have rediscovered the virtues of the so-called Realist School of international politics--a school of thought considered cynical when applied by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Realism at its essence argues that...