Mission Accomplished: He Was Right

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BS Top - Aslan Bush Doctrine 174 Scott J. Ferrell / Congressional Quarterly / Getty Images The moment would not last. Under pressure both from its political allies at home and its dictatorial allies in the Arab world, the Bush administration publicly backed away from its pledge to respect the will of the electorate and more or less shut down the democracy promotion project altogether.

No one doubts the potential danger in allowing Islamist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, whose goals and aspirations do not align with America’s interests in the region, to take part in free elections. But the real danger lies in stifling the political ambitions of such groups. That is because whenever moderate Islamist parties have been allowed to participate in the political process, popular support for more extremist groups has diminished (it should be noted that Hamas is actually the more moderate of the Islamist groups in Gaza, particularly when compared to its rivals in Islamic Jihad).

Consider the case of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, or AKP), which went from being a banned opposition group into the most democratic political force the country has seen, and whose success has sapped Turkey’s more radical religious groups of their popular support. Conversely, when Islamist opposition has been suppressed, militant groups and religious extremists have gained favor. The Algerian civil war, which ravaged that country for nearly a decade in the 1990s and left an estimated 200,000 dead, is a strong case in point: The rise of the ultra-violent militant organization the Armed Algerian Group (GIA) was the direct result of the Algerian military’s decision to ban political participation by the more moderate and accommodating Islamists of Front Islamique de Salut (FIS).

The fact is that President Bush was right: Only through genuine democratic reform can the appeal of extremist groups be undermined and the tide of Muslim militancy stemmed. History has shown repeatedly that allowing such groups to participate more fully in the political process often forces them to moderate their radical ideologies (see: Likud). Thus far, predictions that electoral victories by Islamist parties would inevitably result in the demise of democracy have proved false. Indeed, the opposite is true.

Let us imagine for a moment what would have happened had Hamas been allowed to take its rightful place, albeit with certain restrictions and limitations, as the freely elected government in Palestine. Let us imagine the State Department had not financed and supervised the political campaign of Fatah, “down to the choice of backdrop color for the podium where Mr. Abbas was to proclaim victory,” as a recent column in the Christian Science Monitor claims.

Let us imagine that the United States and Israel had not banned together to blockade Gaza in an attempt to “starve the [new] Palestinian Authority of money and international connections,” as Steven Erlanger of The New York Times reported, “[so] that Palestinians will be so unhappy with life under Hamas that they will return to office a reformed and chastened Fatah movement.” Is it inconceivable that Hamas would have undergone a transformation similar to that of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the AKP in Turkey, or, for that matter, Fatah itself, which was designated a terrorist entity until it became an internationally recognized political entity (and ally to the U.S. and Israel) ? Had Hamas been given the opportunity to govern and fail (as it probably would have), would it still enjoy the popular support it receives from Palestinians? Or would the people have turned against it in favor of a less ideological, more accommodating, and more effective political party—say, Fatah—much as Fatah’s egregious failures turned the Palestinian people toward Hamas? It is often said that elections do not a democracy make. True enough. However, two consecutive elections, particularly in a place like Palestine, would have been a pretty good start.

The simple fact is that democracy cannot take root in the Middle East without the participation of parties like Hamas and Hezbollah. So rather than making it impossible for the peoples of the Middle East to elect such groups into power, perhaps we should try giving them a reason not to.

Read More Farewell Chronicles:
Part I: 20 Forgotten Bush Scandals
Part II: Son of Nixon
Part III: I Survived the Bush Presidency

Reza Aslan, a contributor to the Daily Best, is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at University of California, Riverside and Senior Fellow at the Orfalea Center on Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of the international bestseller, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam and the forthcoming How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror.

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