Article published November 04, 2009
Be careful what you wish for, even if it's democracy
THE juxtaposition of the Afghanistan and American elections during the past few weeks leads, unfortunately, to some dismal thoughts regarding democracy in practice.
Arguments about the operational feasibility of democracy often come to an end in talks with someone citing Winston Churchill's 1947 pronouncement on the subject: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
Everyone nods and smiles, and the subject is put to bed one more time like a troubled infant silenced into sleep with a teaspoon of brandy.
But there are some important footnotes to Churchill's dictum. One is that it was pronounced in 1947, in the wake of World War II, before the end of colonialism, before the point that most of the some 192 now-sovereign nations were created.
A second, perhaps even more relevant, point is that, as far as we know, Churchill never had the bright idea of trying to export democracy beyond Britain's scepter'd isle and the United States. We know what he thought of French "liberte, egalite, fraternite," and trying to conceive of the idea at that point of countries like China, India, Germany, and Japan operating as democracies might have made even him stop drinking.
But here we are, currently tying the U.S. troop level in - and withdrawal from - Iraq to that occupied and still very divided country's holding credible democratic elections in January. That is almost like talking about what the United States will be able to do when the national debt is paid off.As for Afghanistan, President Obama has been holding a series of deliberations on the subject of how many U.S. personnel should be there, ranging from none, to the current 68,000, to the 163,000 that Gen. Stanley McChrystal reportedly would like.
Those discussions reportedly turned in part on Mr. Obama's desire that Afghanistan hold the run-off elections once scheduled for this Saturday to try to clean up the results of the crooked Aug. 20 elections. That was to say, until the second-running candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, flushed the exercise by saying basically that, from what he could see, there was no point to holding the run-off elections in any case given the Karzai government's criminal habits.
Otherwise, that would have been another example of America's hitching its wagon in a very dangerous war in a truly hazardous part of the world to the idea that democratic elections were the answer to a country's problems.
At least during the first Bush administration, Amer-
icans had accepted the idea that their nation's greatness had somehow been a result of its adherence to democracy as its philosophy of government.
I wouldn't try to argue otherwise, citing the country's enormous resources, borders protected by oceans, and other strengths, hoping in any case that most Americans have soaked up some of that starting in grade school.
The fantasy part was the idea that American democracy can be exported, especially to places we invade and occupy.
I'll try to conserve my marriage and few remaining friendships by not discussing the U.S. South. The Philippines and Puerto Rico are works in progress. Germany has gone well, although, for some reason, the United States still has some 70,000 personnel there.
Japan's democracy seems to be solid, although definitely not Jeffersonian, and the United States still has 47,000 personnel stationed there. India got its democracy via the United Kingdom and it functions, although it would definitely be described as different.
And then we come to U.S. democracy. First, is the nation a democracy? We do have regular elections. But to a large degree, the outcomes are dictated by money. The money gets called, variously, campaign contributions, lobbying, bribes, walking-around money, commissions, or just plain graft. What is for sure is that there is lots of it involved in American elections.
We just saw our new President, who some had hoped - based on his own campaign pronouncements - would not let himself be bought with campaign cash, in New York City addressing a group of masters of pay-to-play. The Oct. 20 dinner reportedly raised $3 million for his party.
Anyone who would like to swear by America's professed adherence to the concept of "one person, one vote" as the basis for its democracy needs to be able to square that belief with the fact that the wealth of the top 1 percent of the U.S. population is equal to that of the bottom 95 percent.
The role of the U.S. media in the democratic transaction is by no means clean. Newspapers are becoming the thin church mice of the media package, but a large part of the money that our politicians collect for their campaigns ends up in the hands of the media - primarily television.
And we get about what we deserve. Recent years have showed a string of Democratic and Republican senators, representatives, governors, and their staff members involved in, accused of, and sometimes sent to prison for a shocking list of violations of what is laughingly called "the public trust." Some of what they do would be funny if it did not involve the taxpayers' money: cash in the freezer, tax-free Caribbean real estate, sweetheart loans from banks, and whole political families on the public payroll.
All of the people at the base of these abuses were elected by a group of unwitting fools otherwise known as us. The worst will be if voters don't take the first opportunity to turn these people out of office.
Then, just as one is supposed not to let one's pet mastiff loose to feed on the neighborhood children, America also has a serious responsibility to the world not to try to forcibly export our system to other countries, starting with Afghanistan and Iraq. Why not see if we can straighten things out at home first?
Dan Simpson, a retired diplomat, is a member of the editorial boards of The Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
E-mail dsimpson@post-gazette.com
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