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You
have to admit that when the fate of the free world turned on the
ability of 2,000 elderly Floridans’ ability to decipher a
ballot so poorly designed that they couldn’t tell whether
they were voting for the author of “Ecology and the Human
Spirit” or “How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions
Imperil our Country and Civilization,” you got a little nervous.
And
when a third guy (whose very ability to read is highly suspect)
won as a result … surely the thought must have crossed your
mind.
In
fact, it’s become a bit of a slogan. I even saw it on bumper
stickers just after the last presidential election.
Of
course, democracy in this country would be great, if 70 percent
of the general population weren’t wrong about absolutely
everything.
The
majority thinks that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks. The majority thinks that global warming
is a theory. The
majority cannot name all 50 states in less than six minutes.
Clearly, the majority cannot be left to run the country on its
own. Democracy just isn’t for everybody.
That’s
why we live in a republican democracy, with checks and balances
to protect the rights of the minority from the whims of the majority.
The majority of voters thought segregation was just hunky-dory,
but courts eventually found it to be wrong. The majority was not
pro-choice, but courts rendered those laws unconstitutional. The
majority thinks gays should be denied marriage rights.
Clearly,
the majority of people are either woefully misguided, or just
jerks.
This
is not meant to be critical of the American system of government.
In fact, it’s just the opposite. We need those checks and
balances. And other countries need them a hell of a lot more than
we do.
I’m
not even trying to say that democracy isn’t for us. Of course
it is. We just need to get better at it. I’m not even willing
to state that democracy is anything short of the ideal form of
government. In an enlightened society, we wouldn’t need checks
and balances.
I
make these observations about the American public to pose this
question: If America’s ability to run itself is a little,
shall we say, “iffy,” do we really believe that when
democracy comes to Afghanistan, it will be some sort of triumph
of human rights?
America
has some backward ideas, yes. But when an American woman stands
in front of a crowd of 30,000 rowdy men, she’s there to flash
her tit or sing the national anthem, not receive 100 lashes for
walking with a man who’s not a close relative. She’s
opening for a boy named Justin, not the amputation of someone’s
right hand. In Afghanistan, things are generally the other way
around.
In
George W. Bush’s Texas, it was a fine and time served to
get caught giving a gentleman friend a foreskin colonic. In Kabul,
it was partial burial, followed by a stone wall slowly crushing
the upper half of your trapped body as machinery pushed it over
you.
The
Toronto Star recently quoted Afghan President Hamid Karzai as
saying, “Please, my dear brothers, let your wives and sisters
go to the voter registration process. Later, you can control who
she votes for, but please, let her go.”
Do you get the feeling that this guy just really doesn’t
get it? That’s like the Supreme Court giving men the right
to abortion.
Democracy
is not going to give women or religious minorities equal rights
in Afghanistan. Given a strict constitution, and another 30 years,
they might be where Iraq was — before the interim government
stripped women of the protections they had under Hussein and earlier
governments.
It
has been suggested repeatedly that we aren’t devoting effort
in Iraq and Afghanistan to building the support systems that a
democracy needs – public forums and political parties. Based
upon what I have read, I would tend to agree.
But where we are really failing is in not writing a constitution
that forces Afghans and Iraqis to treat each other as equals,
at least as far as the law is concerned. What they do in the privacy
of their own mosques, as long as everyone’s participating
voluntarily, is none of our business. In Iraq, locals actually
have managed to move women’s rights back since the nation’s
“liberation.”
I’m
saying it here, and in writing: We have to force our views on
them even harder if we want this to work. We either give up on
democracy in Afghanistan, and maybe even in Iraq, or we force
our ideas of equality into their constitution and into their courts.
That
might even mean giving them a Supreme Court that isn’t even
made up of Afghans. That might mean minimal input from native
men (and many of the women) about the rights of women. That might
mean giving them a system of government they think is damning
to their very souls. Or, we can just give up, because democracy
isn’t compatible with certain interpretations of the Quran.
I
know that all seems terribly arrogant: “I think we’re
right and they’re wrong.” But I do. And it’s not
racist or intolerant to say that freedom of religion is right,
freedom of speech is right, equality of the sexes is right, or
that execution for “buggery” is wrong. Defending any
of these things in the name of cultural tolerance is hypocritical
and simple-minded.
I’ve
grown unbelievably tired of hearing officials say that we’re
leaving these nations for “the people” to govern, as
if democracy suddenly will flourish now that we’ve driven
off the government that was allowed to take power. We had to step
up and kick these bad guys out, but now we suddenly think that
they can get by on their own. “Mission accomplished.”
Democracy
in America works because we have a constitution that protects
the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Jim
Crow, the Patriot Act … whenever the majority, or someone
in power, tramples the rights of American citizens, we have the
courts (eventually) to step in.
To
expect democracy to work in a land where a majority believes in
Islamic law is as far-fetched as supply-side economics. That’s
why Bush is such a fan.
Democracy
is only a good thing when it protects everyone equally. And the
majority never is fully in favor of that. Clearly, we cannot leave
a country like Afghanistan in the hands of its majority.
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