Crowds of joyful Libyans, some with tears in their eyes, parted with the legacy of Muammar Gaddafi on Saturday as they voted in the first free national election in 60 years.
But in the eastern city of Benghazi, cradle of last year's uprising and now seeking more autonomy from the interim government, protesters stormed polling stations and burned hundreds of ballot papers.
Libyans are choosing a 200-member assembly which will elect a prime minister and cabinet before laying the ground for full parliamentary elections next year under a new constitution.
Already, the path to real democracy with rule of law is difficult. But this must be so, as it has in the past. Civic society has endured so much damage that it can't be corrected with a quick Twitter revolution and a fast transition to restrained debates moderated by the League of Women Voters.
Many in the West, caught up with the stirring sight of young proto-democrats marching in the street with their Twitter and Facebook accounts broadcasting it all--thought that the despots had been holding down a majority of people with those feelings and desires.
And now, as the revolutions that took place struggle to move forward to the end state on that long path to liberty and rule of law, many in the West are ready to throw up their hands in defeat:
Still championed by over-excited, ill-informed pundits in the West, and kept alive on the ground by a gaggle of equally naive, out-of-touch and mostly English-speaking local activists, the bitter truth is that the so-called Arab Spring has proved a dismal failure on every level.
Nothing good has come of it at all, if judged by the classic Western values of liberty, freedom of expression and democratic accountability.
Supposedly, we needed a gradual transition to democracy guided by enlightened despots. Hosni Mubarak of Egypt even said so before he died. That settles it, right?
Wrong.
The path to real democracy was always going to be difficult. The yearnings for democracy on the streets of Arab cities is real. But they don't really have any experience with what real democracy means, now do they? That has always been our role in this hopeful drama. Rather than teaching Arabs to elect good men--which they failed to do in Egypt, no doubt--who we approve of, we need to avoid choosing leaders and teach them how to elect good men.
And we need to help them keep having elections until they tire of those pretending to deliver real democracy as an expression of popular will and elect those who will provide rule of law as the basis of real democracy.
It is true that we have failed so far to teach Egyptians to distinguish between bad men out to exploit formal elections to seize power and good men who will take the many steps needed to reach rule of law and real democracy. But it doesn't mean we should give up.
And it doesn't mean that we should believe that the right path was to support the Mubaraks of the world and hope they reform. George W. Bush tried that path for Egypt and he was blocked by "realists" here who preferred the "stability" of Mubarak. And without pressure, Mubarak's deathbed conversion to the need to slowly introduce democracy did not take place.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that reasonable despots are the key to frustrating Islamists. While the despots can call the Islamists their enemy, it doesn't follow that Islamism was the enemy of the despots. No, the despots merely tried to mobilize Islamism for themselves and deny that support to the opposition. This didn't work very well for Pakistan, now did it?
Despite the Westphalian system serving as the basis for its legitimacy, Pakistan has evolved from its secular origins to embrace a pre-Westphalian concept of the primacy of Islam over the state. This transformation has become a source of instability to both the government of Pakistan and its neighbors, particularly India and Afghanistan, and threatens U.S. objectives in Afghanistan. Initially, Pakistan’s government attempted merely to buttress the legitimacy of the state without any sense that its actions would spur the growing inf luence of Islamists in Pakistani society. In 1956, for instance, Pakistan became the first state to use “Islamic" in its title: “the Islamic Republic of Pakistan." However, despite the intention of Pakistan’s founder merely to use Islam to lend legitimacy to the state, the introduction of religion into the political sphere has grown as a force in society beyond the government’s control. From early in the nation’s history the writing has been on the wall. The founder of Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami party (Islamic Society), for example, spoke for many in the middle and lower classes when he advocated establishing “Islamic rule, [organizing] the various aspects of social life on Islamic bases, to adopt such means as will widen the sphere of Islamic influence in the world."
Soon after independence, Pakistan’s government began supporting militant groups both to serve as proxies in the ongoing conf lict with India over Kashmir and as a means of bolstering the state’s legitimacy. Under the presidency of General Zia ul-Haq, these efforts linking the government to Islam became comprehensive, transforming Pakistan’s government and society: “Zia’s decade in power . . . ushered in an era of religious obscurantism that affected every facet of domestic life and foreign policy."15 Zia, with American assistance, famously used Islam as a shield against Communist influence in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion. Pakistan’s support for the Afghan Mujahideen further caused the country to turn to the Middle East for both financial support and to strengthen its position in the Muslim world. Zia also integrated Islamic principles into schooling, the judiciary, and the military[.]
The Pakistanis could not control the tiger they tried to ride. They bought some time by trying to focus the Islamist violence they unleashed but could not control by directing it abroad, but that just invites foreign war and the anger of jihadis against the government when their ambitions abroad are either limited or if they win and need new targets.
And our deep financial support for the Pakistan that has evolved doesn't even win us friends in Pakistan:
Pakistani politicians and military leaders are obsessed with the idea that Pakistan is being persecuted by American plots and conspiracies. India is still seen as a major conspirator as well but America is the superpower and, therefore, must be the bigger threat. This Pakistani conspiracy culture includes things like the belief that the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States were staged by the CIA, to cause hatred of Moslems. The Islamic terrorism in Pakistan is believed to be somehow caused by the United States. ...
All this is the result of decades of anti-American propaganda. Opinion surveys in Pakistan show 74 percent of Pakistanis see the United States as an enemy and this is up from 64 percent three years ago. Some 40 percent of Pakistanis believe economic and military aid from the United States is not helpful, while only ten percent see such aid as useful. The aid is seen as part of the American conspiracy against Pakistan. The Pakistani military exploits and encourages this paranoia by supporting Islamic radicals.
And this government has nuclear weapons. Isn't foreign policy realism grand?
The problems of the Middle East are deep and can't be quickly solved with 140-character manifestos. The Arab world needs time. We exhausted our supply of miracles coming out of the Middle East a couple thousand years ago, no? Be really realistic. We need to help Arabs get the time to sort out their problems without giving the Islamists the chance to blow up sizable chunks of the world.
Arguing that the Western response to the Arab Spring should have been to back the dictators to the hilt and pressure them to gradually move to democracy is a fantasy strategy. And it is immoral even if it could work. During the Cold War, I accepted the need to bolster Arab dictators willing to help us defeat the Soviet Union. But that higher goal is gone. Arabs deserve freedom no less than anyone else. But they don't know what real freedom is.
Work the problem. No other solution can work. The Arab Spring is an opportunity--not a gift from God that requires no effort.
