As Iraqis went to the polls last Sunday, one was reminded of Janis Joplin belting out Chris Kristfferson’s lyrics, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” Freedom, along with its attendant building blocks, social justice, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, suits today’s Zeitgeist. Whatever, beliefs and attitudes, whatever values and virtues, that a society embraces outside freedom — denying individuals their right to independent thought and action in politics and literature, in discourse and media, in science and faith — are cliches.
That was the theme, to be exact, that informed President Bush’s soaring inaugural address two weeks ago, where by outlining America’s commitment to “the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world” the chief executive touched not on buzz words but on the most salient truth in human existence.
As Iraqis prepared to vote for a 275-member constitutional assembly, American commentators waxed poetic, in places hyperbolic: This is the country’s first democratic election in half a century, we were told, and the start of what was once deemed unattainable.
The Washington Post put out a full-page illustrated graphic guide to the voters, multiparty candidates and the process of choosing the assembly charged with drafting Iraq’s permanent constitution. And American forces, operating from Baghdad, made sure that deliveries of more than seven million pounds of ballot boxes, voting forms, cardboard booths and indelible purple ink to stain voters’ fingers, were made to about 500 polling sites across the country.
The US clearly has high hopes about shaping the destiny of the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates.
And as for Iraqis, braving bombs and bullets to cast their ballots, well, when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.
Yet, is Iraqi political culture prepared to absorb the shock of democracy? Prepared not just to bring to power, in this case, a government that is truly representative of the majority of the people — an unprecedented event in the country’s history — but to bring into the lives of ordinary Iraqis all that democracy entails, a free press, an independent judiciary, respect for the individual’s constitutional rights, legal protection and equality of opportunity for all, and scrupulous observance of the rule of law?
Is this political culture, that derives its ethos from lraq’s 80-year modern history of bloody coups followed by unspeakable mayhem, where violence and coercion were the only means used by the ruling elite to stay in power and cow the citizenry into submission, equipped to wage the deeper struggle for true freedom?
How long does it take for this kind of repressive political culture, outside a cataclysmic revolutionary upheaval, as happened in Russia, China and Iran in the last century, to shed the skin of its gaucheries?
A lot of people, I say, seem to have high hopes. Alas, this columnist, known for the kvetch that he is, does not.
Twenty months after Saddam’s ouster, and the effort to democratize Iraq began, Iraqi detainees are still being routinely beaten, hung by their wrists and shocked with electrical wires — by their fellow Iraqis! That is, Iraqi police, jailers and intelligence agents.
“They are committing systematic torture and other abuses, a report released in recent days by Human Rights Watch claimed. Legal safeguards are being ignored, political opponents are targeted for arrest, and the government of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi “appeared to be actively taking part, or is at least complicit, in these grave violations of fundamental human rights,” the report concluded.
A spokesman for Allawi told reporters archly:” I will put this report on the prime minister’s desk tomorrow to see if he has any reaction.’’ If you’re waiting for Allawi to react, don’t hold your breath.
The interim prime minister himself, it is now confirmed, was involved in the killing, execution-style, of several insurgents being held at a Baghdad police station. Paul McGeough, a reporter for the Australian Sydney Morning Herald, described in an article in late June how Allawi, a former Baathist, had been taken to seven suspects, who were made to stand against a wall in a courtyard of the police station, their faces covered, where the Iraqi leader, after asking for a pistol, then shot each one in the head.
McGeough quotes one witness as saying that “the terrorists were better off dead, for they had been tortured for days.” The story was given further credence by Jon Lee Anderson, the New Yorker’s man in Baghdad, who wrote a profile of Allawi in the magazine last week.
Perhaps an equally telling though not so gruesome story, that points to how debased Iraqi political culture has become, and how difficult the task ahead will be, is the one about the scant respect the Iraqi ruling elite have for, or the scant knowledge they evince of, the role the press plays in a democratic society.
Larry Kaplow, Cox News Service’s correspondent in Baghdad, reported last week that at a recent press conference attended mainly by the Arab press, Allawi’s party — without the prime minister present — offered apologies that no lunch had been served.
Steven Negus, a reporter for the Financial Times of London, was present as Allawi’s campaign aides handed each reporter an envelope with a $100 bill enclosed. Negus declined, but many others took the money.
Needless to say, a reporter filing for a self-respecting newspaper elsewhere, doing the same thing, would be fired. No questions asked. Out the door, fellow.
All of which is by way of saying that, sadly, Iraq has a lot more distance to travel before it emerges as a democratic Eden, or as President Bush put it last Saturday, “a powerful example to reformers throughout the entire Middle East.”
The process of insulation of political consciousness that Iraqis have gone through over the last eight decades — of the way in which repressive socialization has falsified and coarsened the world view and reflex system of a whole nation, along with three of its generations — is a grim one indeed. Today one is reminded of Janis Joplin’s lyrics about freedom, yes, but one is also reminded that you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
As you read this, true, Iraqis will already have chosen the first freely elected representatives in their modern history. The exercise, however, will not qualify as a radical break from the past, but a new riff on an old melody, so long as these representatives intend to turn around the next day and torture prisoners (or off them execution-style), ignore legal safeguards that protect citizens from abuse by the state, arrest on whim political opponents of the regime, become implicated in violations of human rights, and, yes, engage in the brazen practice of bribing news reporters by slipping them hundred dollar bills at a news conference.
Genuine democracy in such a tawdry environment is a Chimera.
There is much to be criticized about American actions in Iraq, but when it comes to bringing democracy to that brutalized land, it is Arabs and not Americans who need to clean their act.
