Egypt Protests, Democracy, and the War on Terror

     Eric Trager, an Islamic Fulbright fellow and member of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, visited Rowan University last week to host a discussion about the Egyptian revolution. I got to talking to him afterwards and he said this: “The Bush administration’s democracy agenda put liberalism on enough people’s minds, and encouraged the new generation of activists to think in terms of democracy.”

     Then a lightning bolt hit my brain and this idea came into it:

     America’s been involved in a ‘war on terrorism’ since 9/11. The only problem is we’re fighting an ideology, Islamic radicalism, and not a country. The only way to win a war against an ideology is by using your own ideology. For us that ideology is democracy — freedom. So we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, set up democratic governments there, and now people throughout the Arbabic world are clamoring for democracy. Coincidence?

     The idea is that by spreading democracy Islamic radicalism will dwindle and America will be safe(r) from terrorists. After 9/11 Bush pledged to do everything in his power to protect America from another attack — spreading democracy through the Middle East was, and is, the best way to do that. 

       Here’s some speculation:   Iran is the regional power in the Middle East, and they are also the most hard-lined fundalmentalist regime. If we want to win a war against radical Islamists, Iran would be the perfect spot to start the spread of democracy. But Iran is huge. So what do we do? We invade Afghanistan because the Taliban are incredibly weak and besides they harbored Bin Laden. Now Iran has a democratic neighbor just across their east border. Then we invade Iraq because we’ve already kicked Saddam’s ass and know how to do it again. Now Iran has democratic nations on its eastern and western borders. Why wouldn’t we have just invaded Iran? Well it’s twice the size of Iraq and has 40 million more people in it, that’s a lot larger insurgency. Now the Iranians are seeing neighbors on both sides enjoying freedom, so why wouldn’t they too want it?

     Some more speculation:   Regarding the WMD’s fiasco, perhaps Bush made up the WMD’s excuse because he couldn’t come out and say, “Hey everybody, we’re going to invade and force democracy on you!” That surely would’ve turned all Arabic Muslims against the U.S.  So he told the world instead that Saddam had these terrible weapons of mass destruction, invaded under that veil, and set up a democracy, spreading the ideology of freedom through the Arabic world.

        On another note, the Manifest Destiny is all about America’s ‘God given right’ to spread its freedoms and democracy around the world. Perhaps Bush read this. Either way President Bush brought democracy and freedom to the Middle East and now it’s spreading. Is that not a victory over the radical Islamic ideology we’ve declared war on?

     I want to hear what people think about this! Do these ideas hold water or are they full of holes?