The most important issue is coming up now, as our week is winding down, the one Michael Contarino raises in his last posting, namely regarding the role of morality in foreign policy. I could not agree more that the next president must work to restore the "moral credibility" of the United States.
Schwartz argues that America "always" puts freedom before peace [here]. Actually, as today's headlines show yet again, the Bush Administration is falling victim to its own propaganda. It is endangering vital U.S. interests in order to continue pretending that it is promoting democratization.
Michael Contarino correctly points out that in discussing democracy promotion, two issues can become entangled. One is what means should be employed. As I stated before, I am all in favor of democracy building by non-lethal means, via education, cultural exchanges, leadership training, fostering civil society projects, and much more. I do have an issue with using cruise missiles, bombers, and the Marines to build democracy.
I am delighted to learn from one of the great specialists in the field, Shuja Nawaz, who is just back from the tribal areas in Pakistan next to the border with Afghanistan.
The critical phrase in Professor Piki Ish-Shalom's valuable posting is "That does not mean that we need to force democracy at gun point." He is surely right that the Neocons gave democracy promotion a bad name. I could not agree more that the ideal of democratization should not be abandoned. The problem, as his key sentence helps us to remember, is that the language traps us, because the phrase "democracy promotion" covers both coerced democratization (which is what regime change means, at least in the Neocon world) and non-lethal support of democratization.
I, like Professor Piki Ish-Shalom, am all in favor of promoting democracy by educational, persuasive means, and indicated how this may be done in Security First. It is the violent type of promotion that I object to.
We are told all too often that the invasion of Iraq was the wrong war but that the war in Afghanistan is the right one. Indeed, both presidential candidates favor a surge of troops in Afghanistan. However, the attempt to impose a regime change on Afghanistan is failing, all the while causing more and more Afghan, American, and other casualties.
The main reason is that a conventional army is no match for guerrilla forces, especially when they can rely on a safe haven right across the border. The Taliban dress like civilians, are supplied by civilians, and are housed in civilian homes. When the U.S. attacks them, it inevitably ends up killing civilians, including women and children. The notion that if the U.S. used more ground forces, and less planes and artillery, there would be fewer casualties is a valid one--as far as the Afghans are concerned. But many more Americans and allied troops are going to be lost this way. Using airpower undermines the support of the war by the Afghans; using ground troops undermines the support of the war by America's allies, and soon--by Americans.
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