Democracy in America: Democracy in Iraq

Unsurprisingly, I agree with the New York Times: especially if Iraq wants us out, it’s time to get out of Iraq. While I’ve previously wondered aloud about whether pulling out of Iraq is the right thing to do, especially since we knew (or would have known, absent a lying president and a complicit press corps) that going in that Iraq was a long-term commitment, when the rebuilding nation’s will comes into play, our task must inevitably narrow, lest our presence subtly transition from nation-building to occupation.

It’s also well past time that we transition from our futile and naive “democracy-building” mission back to focusing on our initial causus belli: fighting terrorism (remember that?). Especially If Obama plans to draw down troops but not entirely abandon the Iraqis – his plan incorporates residual forces tasked with derailing Al Qaeda – we can call this a “victory,” as long as “victory” is realistically defined.

That will mean abandoning the goal of building perfect democracy in Iraq.

While I acknowledge the honor and raw optimism – dare I say, the audacity of hope? – behind the pipe-dream of building lasting western democracy in Iraq, that goal was never realistic, and it completely failed to account for the importance that historical tradition plays in building democracy. Looking back on our own history, the Anglo-Saxon democratic model grew over the course of a thousand years, a thousand injustices, and a thousand sacrifices. The stunning realization that democracy is “the worst of all forms of government, except all the others that’ve been tried” is a realization bought by blood and the passage of time. Democracy never grows by fiat, it never grows without a fertile historical tradition, and if forced on a nation before its time, it’s never quite right. We need only look at Russia’s slow slide to despotism, and Algeria’s tragicomic early-90s democratic experiment, which ended with the election of an anti-democracy party. Without the proper historical soil, democracy just doesn’t “take”: while we needn’t abandon all hope on Iraq’s democratic experiment, we mustn’t expect it to work perfectly or quickly. It may yet work out, but we can’t “hold our breath.”

And here is John McCain’s problem. All of the experience in the world can’t save America, and can’t save Iraq, unless it’s applied to sensible goals. What we need from our next president is experience, yes, but experience plus perspective.