Iraq and Democracy

Nader, Laura.

Anthropological Quarterly, Volume 76, Number 3, Summer 2003,

pp. 479-483 (Article)

Published by George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research

DOI: 10.1353/anq.2003.0042

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/anq/summary/v076/76.3nader.html

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SOCIAL THOUGHT AND COMMENTARY

Iraq and Democracy

Laura Nader
University of California, Berkeley

T here is an uneasy feeling in our country—a feeling that something un-

precedented is happening. A Vietnam veteran put it more bluntly: “We’ve
lost all 3 branches of governmentóthe judiciary when they selected the
President, the Congress when they abdicated to the Executive Branch, the
Executive Branch when they refused to listen to dissenting Americans.”
There is an uneasy feeling in the country—our founding fathers placed the
war-making power in the hands of Congress where decisions could be openly
debated. Slowly we realize that a dozen unelected men and one woman are
making decisions that will compromise the lives of American fighting forces, the
lives of Iraqis we say we want to liberate, the future of American schools, health
care, our relations with old allies; the costs of war unfathomable. Senator
Byrd’s “we stand passively mute” speech objected to Congressional abdication.
Three branches of government are now one; objections by high-ranking mili-
tary officers are muted—all of this justified by unsubstantiated presuppositions
fed to the public ad nauseam: 1) that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and
that they are linked up with al Qaeda; 2) that the rest of the world, including
NATO allies, are wrong: 3) that the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators—in
spite of 12 years of sanctions and thousands of child deaths, in spite of daily

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bombing missions since 1991, in spite of an illegal invasion. Such prognostica-

tion is indicative of poor intelligence, an example of what happens when a pres-
ident is isolated by a band of self-serving advisors.
How little we know of the Arab world, of Iraq and its people, of the place that
Baghdad—the Florence of the Middle East—has in the hearts and minds of Arab
peoples. Iraq—the cradle of civilization. How could we have thought that Iraqis
would not defend their country from invasion? Why would the Shias in the
south have welcomed the Americans when Shia Iran is also being threatened by
the American administration?
How little we know about the Arab world—do we really think there is no
consequence of our double standard foreign policy? One for Saddam Hussein
and one for Ariel Sharon—both brutal men responsible for the death and de-
struction of innocent civilians. Hussein gassed the Kurds, Sharon killed 17,000
Lebanese civilians before he got to Sabra and Chatilla, to one side his provo-
cation of the present intifada, both fed by arms from the United States. Double
standard—the attack on the USS Cole by Muslim terrorists was rightly con-
demned, but the USS Liberty in 1967 bombed by Israeli war planes was covered
up by the Pentagon. Israel is the sole country in the region with weapons of
mass destruction.
I’ve taught about the peoples and cultures of the Arab world at the University
of California, Berkeley since 1960. Currently, I teach a seminar on what other civ-
ilizations think of the west, beginning with a Chinese Buddhist missionary who
went west to India in the 9th century. In teaching I have been struck by the
depth of ignorance about this large expanse of the world. In my research I
have noticed mirrored images. The Arab historians of the Crusades thought the
Crusaders were barbaric savages, ignorant of medicine, without no culture or
civilization, although they had technology. Gandhi said the same about the
British—brute force. Some years ago when the Middle East Center entertained
a visit from Moroccan governors, I argued with one of the governors over their
use of light water nuclear reactors along their coast in the absence of Moroccan
know-how making them dependent on the French, their former colonizers. In
frustration the governor blurted out, “The French—they have no culture, no civ-
ilization, but they do have technology (not the same as civilization).” This is an
observation that we hear from Tokyo to Gibraltar, most recently from Japanese
CEOs, and even more recently the Europeans refer to the US as the extreme West
in making similar points.
In her new book, Leap of Faith, Queen Noor of Jordan quotes George Bush
Sr. as saying to her husband, “I will not allow this little dictator [Saddam Hussein]

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to control 25% of the civilized world’s oil.” Of course, the key words here are “the
civilized world.” By their very nature fundamentalists of all stripes consider
their doctrines to be the truest, superior to all others, who fall into the catego-
ry of uncivilized.
At the time of the first Gulf War I was told by a distinguished Kuwaiti woman
that the invasion of Kuwait was a family quarrel that should be settled by
Arabs. Queen Noor tells us that King Hussein thought his peace effort was sab-
otaged; his mission was to avoid bringing western troops into the region which
would trigger radical Islamacists. Why didn’t we let the King of Jordan deal
with the problem? If we had a Senator Fulbright today, he would answer, “the
arrogance of power.” How is such arrogance expressed? In religious zeal—per-
haps the Crusades have never ended; in militarism—the military industrial
complex that President Eisenhower warned about, independent of democrat-
ic decision-making; racism—the need for weaponry to be tested on somebody;
and finally the powerful impact of intertwining domestic fundamentalist Zionist
ideology with American foreign policy, a position which, under the Truman
administration, Secretary of Defense Forrestal passionately warned as danger-
ous to the security of the United States.
Today we face the consequences of the unilateral invasion of a sovereign
country which at the time of invasion posed no threat to the United States. It is,
as my neighbor said, like taking a baseball bat to a bee’s nest, playing free and
easy with American lives. The double talk is extraordinary. On the one hand, we
are bringing democracy to Iraq, by means of war not democratically declared.
As is common, democracy promoters ignore the traditions of those they seek to
assist, and lack a grounded understanding of their own political democracy.
Although it has been repeated ad nauseam that there is only one democracy in
the Middle East, a recent study of Muslim and non-Muslim nations concluded
that while few citizens of Muslim states enjoy democratic rights, there is rough-
ly equal respect for democratic principles in Muslim and western societies. All to
say we must be alert. Representations are amplified and coarsened by the mass
media. The current United States invasion of Iraq can only exacerbate the vicious
circle of anti-American and anti-Muslim or Arab stereotyping.
There are times when events compel nations to bring their actions to the test
of principles. At such times, the truly patriotic citizen is forced to compare na-
tional ideals with immediate national purposes and policies. Decisions made at
these crises points determine the fate of the nation—whether it rises farther to-
wards its ideals or moves away from them. As it stands now, under the leader-
ship of Bush and Blair, we are proceeding to massive assaults in the midst of

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civilian populations that eclipse the bombing of Hanoi. The actions taken un-
der cover of the Patriot Act make the Palmer raids of the 1920s and the
McCarthyite tragedies of the 1950s minor by comparison. The silver lining in all
this is the worldwide objection to unilateral war. The worldwide peace move-
ment is a movement for global survival. Democracy has made great strides—
people want to decide the fate of the world, sometimes in direct opposition to
their governments and against talk of nuclear strikes.
The peace protests have been our best citizen efforts at homeland security—
not all Americans agree with the actions of their government. It is also true that
peace protesters have been unsuccessful thus far in communicating with our
own government. Suggestions: we need to get specific. The media are obsessed
with tactics and technology over political analysis. Embedded media may find it
difficult to maintain an arms-length with government, in order to question the
official story. Seymour Hersh’s reporting of Richard Perle and the Defense Policy
Board and their ties with war profiteering is good investigative reporting, a tiny
inroad towards dismantling the military industrial complex. That these war prof-
iteers operate unabashed in and out of government could be in our favor.
We need to be more politic on the international scene—our ambassador
shouldn’t walk out of the UN because he doesn’t like what the Iraqi ambassa-
dor is saying. We need to repair relations with the French, Germans, and Russians
who have closer ties to Iran and recognize their long term oil contracts in Iraq,
and with others through diplomacy not bribes. Efforts at cultural exchange
with the Arab world should be stepped up. In the late 19th century, Americans
founded universities and colleges in Cairo, Beirut, and Istanbul, a civilized way
to introduce democratic thought and American good will, and a cheap invest-
ment compared with the use of military might. There is nothing inevitable
about the military industrial complex. Remember the peace dividend? Just be-
cause Congress dropped it doesn’t mean that citizens should. Our leaders might
listen to dissenting voices as a way to avoid miscalculations, as a way to devel-
op criteria for what it means to win or lose. Islam is the world’s and America’s
fastest growing religion. 1.2 billion people should give pause to those who
think only of military victories.
When hostilities cease there will be the challenge of rebuilding what we
have destroyed, and finding a graceful way out. Before the 1990 Gulf War, Iraq
had a stable middle class, largest in the Arab world, education and health care
were almost universal, women had achieved in the professions and elsewhere.
For a post-conflict Iraq, there is no culturally sensitive plan as General MacArthur
had before he entered Japan, where the first rule was “do not humiliate the en-

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emy.” We might learn from the 19th century Americans who built universities,
a civilized effort that does not require jeopardizing American lives. Most of all
Americans need to start practicing democracy; if we did we wouldn’t have to sell
it. Government by the people and for the people is the vision the United States
has given the world. Never before in history had a government been created
with its main purpose to secure people’s rights regardless of what the govern-
ment said. The Bill of Rights was the first legal document in the history of the
world to limit what the government could do and to secure those rights for in-
dividuals. That is something to remember.

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