Democratization Ain’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be?

Andrew Higgins of The War Street Journal seems to think he’s stumbled across an original insight. In today’s opening installment of a series called “Power & Peril: America’s Supremacy and Its Limits,” Higgins profiles Morocco (sorry, not available for free). The Moroccans, of course, have democratized themselves, so the resentment of outsiders that we see in Iraq and Afghanistan isn’t an issue there. Moroccan democracy must be running fairly smoothly then, no? Give us the historical perspective, Mr. Higgins:

Democracy has had a good run in the past decade and a half. … Yet democracy has sometimes empowered the intolerant.

I recall the refrain from junior high: No sh*t, Sherlock.

The perils are especially keen in Muslim lands, where fervent Islamists are often the only organized alternative to entrenched and frequently corrupt elites. In Iraq, the U.S. wrestles with the influence of clerics from the Shiite Muslim majority, including some radicals who want a rigid theocracy. Others don’t push for this but insist on direct elections likely to be dominated by sectarian passions. And here in Morocco, after the suicide attacks, King Mohammed VI, in a somber television address, pinpointed the cause in those “who take advantage of democracy … to sow seeds of ostracism, fanaticism and discord.”

And here you have the crux of this very long (and, I must admit, informative) article ostensibly on Morocco: This is why we’re not holding elections in Iraq. Which raises a universe of questions, including: How come no one thought about democracy in Iraq while planning to bring Iraq democracy? When will Iraq be ready for elections—two years, six years, twenty? What will have changed in the meantime? Will the Shiites scrap a millennium+ of doctrine and chill considerably? Will the Sunnis reach demographic parity? Will every schoolchild read Alexis de Tocqueville and understand him better than Americans do? Or will Iraqi democracy simply amount to voting for Paul Bremer’s gofer?

I love to say “I told you so.” (Sorry– a lot of the links are broken, but that’s a peril of writing as I do.)