SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: I found myself chatting some time ago with Theresa Loar, who ran the State Department's women's office, when she told me about how she had tricked other senior officials in the building.
This was during the Clinton administration, and she was trying to persuade them to attend a meeting on an issue they weren't likely to care about. "So I told them we were going to talk about democracy promotion - the department's evergreen issue."
As Loar noted, promoting democracy has been a foreign-policy priority for decades - since long before former President George W. Bush soiled the brand. President Obama has said he intends to increase funding to agencies involved in democracy promotion because, as he put it last year, "we benefit from the expansion of democracy. Democracies are our best trading partners, our most valuable allies and the nations with which we share our deepest values."
But then comes the thorny question: What about democracy promotion in the Middle East - easily the most repressive region in the world and, arguably, the most important? The recent history is not encouraging.
The Egyptians staged elections, and the Muslim brotherhood won 88 seats in parliament.
The Palestinians staged elections, and Hamas won. The Lebanese staged elections, and then Hezbollah managed to force the elected government to give it veto power over its decisions.
And there's more.
While working in Cairo last summer, I interviewed several leaders of Kefaya, a small citizens group calling for democratic change. The Egyptian government has arrested and harassed its members. These leaders decried the government's repressive policies and said all the right things to an American visitor. In fact, they sounded almost like Jeffersonian democrats. Then, when I headed out the door, they handed me a sheaf of papers.
I filed them away, but when I finally managed to read them, I was shocked. These people were well-educated, English-speaking, seemingly Western-oriented Egyptians.
And yet, their literature frothed with invective about the "Zionist lobby" and its "odious assault on Arab native soul." The United States and the world's Jews "are two sides of the same coin, each nourishing the other, and neither curable alone."
Even liberal democrats are besotted with angry, racist prejudice - and worse. Do we want these people governing Egypt? Does the Obama administration really want to promote democracy in the Middle East?
By most accounts, Obama is not going to make the same mistakes Bush made. To the Bush administration, promoting democracy meant encouraging, even forcing, nations to hold elections. That's what happened in Egypt and the Palestinian territories.
But democracy cannot flourish in nations that have no middle class - and no history of free political discussion**. >>> Joel Brinkley | Saturday, January 31, 2009
*Joel Brinkley is a professor of journalism at Stanford University and a former foreign policy correspondent for the New York Times. To comment to him, e-mail brinkley@foreign-matters.com. To comment, e-mail us at forum@sfchronicle.com.
**Professor Brinkley, democracy cannot flourish where Islam is the opium of the people! Please read my essay: Islam: The Enemy of Democracy and Freedom >>>
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