Compare and Contrast
Fouad Ajami in the WSJ:

It was not historical naiveté that had given birth to the Bush administration's campaign for democracy in Arab lands. In truth, it was cruel necessity, for the campaign was born of the terrors of 9/11. America had made a bargain with Arab autocracies, and the bargain had failed. It was young men reared in schools and prisons in the very shadow of these Arab autocracies who came America's way on 9/11. We had been told that it was either the autocracies or the furies of terror. We were awakened to the terrible recognition that the autocracies and the terror were twins, that the rulers in Arab lands were sly men who displaced the furies of their people onto foreign lands and peoples.

This had been the truth that President Bush underscored in his landmark speech to the National Endowment for Democracy on Nov. 6, 2003, proclaiming this prudent Wilsonianism in Arab lands: "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place for stagnation, resentment and violence for export." Nothing in Palestine, nothing that has thus far played out in Iraq, and scant little of what happened in other Arab lands, negates the truth at the heart of this push for democratic reform. The "realists" tell us that this is all doomed, that the laws of gravity in the region will prevail, that autocracy, deeply ingrained in the Arab-Muslim lands, is sure to carry the day. Modern liberalism has joined this smug realism, and driven by an animus toward the American leader waging this campaign for liberty, now asserts the built-in authoritarianism of Arab society.

Robert Kuttner in the Boston Globe:

America was once a universal beacon. Ever since America asserted global leadership in the mid-20th century, people around the world have expressed nothing so much as ambivalence.

They despised the US military might that frequently installed local dictators who served Washington and Wall Street, enriched themselves, and slaughtered domestic opponents; they continued to admire America's internal democracy and vitality.

They hated the economic imperialism that often made their local economies appendages of America's; they liked the consumer products and spread of advanced technologies.

They resented the universal projection of America's pop culture at the expense of their own; they wore the jeans, bought the records, and flocked to the movies.

The most effective of US postwar presidents deftly navigated this complex ambivalence. They maximized what people everywhere like about America -- the openness, the idealism, the dynamism, the support for universal human rights. American presidents sometimes resorted to force, but tried to do so after consultation and consensus. Until lately, global public opinion, on balance, respected America.

Enter George W. Bush. He offered the worst possible combination of strategies -- unilateral swagger, combined with loudly proclaimed promotion of democracy. Should anyone be surprised when the democratic elections produce a string of repudiations? Or that America dare not foment democracy in its faithful despotic allies, Egypt or Saudi Arabia, lest the people vote in two more radically Islamist regimes?

America is still the beacon Mr. Kuttner. President Bush did not create the problem of depotic Arab nations fomenting anti-western terror. It was the "most effective of US postwar presidents" who did that. President Bush is trying to set the game right. And it's only a question of time before Egypt and Saudi Arabia go democratic.
- posted by Base10 @ 6:55 AM