COMMENTARY: Bush’s Religious Idealism Aids Winds of Democratic Change

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) The winds of change are blowing in the Middle East. Across the region, the people’s voice is at last being heard. Progress toward democracy is evident in Afghanistan, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. Iran has long had a significant movement for political liberty. Even Saudi Arabia shows small signs […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The winds of change are blowing in the Middle East. Across the region, the people’s voice is at last being heard. Progress toward democracy is evident in Afghanistan, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. Iran has long had a significant movement for political liberty. Even Saudi Arabia shows small signs of progress.

A review of the major developments is encouraging:


_ In Afghanistan, free elections returned President Hamid Karzai to office. There is much to be done to improve life there, but the nation is led by a legitimate, freely elected president.

_ In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak recently proclaimed the need for more democratic freedoms in that land. The extent and implications of these freedoms are not yet known.

_ In Palestine, free elections this winter brought Mahmoud Abbas to power and also determined legislative seats. Abbas is the first democratically elected leader in that people’s history.

_ In Lebanon, people long subjugated by Syria are protesting in the streets for self-determination, and the pro-Syrian Lebanese government has fallen.

_ And in Iraq, free elections in late January have yielded a robust negotiating process for the formation of a new parliament. Increasingly, the insurgents and suicide bombers are seen as enemies not of America, but of Iraq’s own future.

There can be little question that the vision and policies of this American government have played a role in triggering the exciting events of recent weeks. President Bush is to be commended for comments in both his Inaugural Address and the State of the Union speech that offered an expansive vision of political liberty and named governments that need to make progress in that direction.

He has clearly positioned American policy as pro-democracy and pro-freedom, offering reward and praise for those countries moving in that direction and criticism and pressure for those that are not.

This marks an evolution in Bush’s thinking. While campaigning for president in 1999-2000 he sounded like a classic “realist,” eschewing an American foreign policy that would involve much international intervention or “nation-building.” In making the case for the invasion of Afghanistan after Sept. 11, the cause was clear _ to destroy the Taliban regime symbiotic with the al-Qaida network that had attacked us. And the invasion of Iraq was justified as a preemptive assault on Saddam Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction.


Cynics could easily argue that Bush’s latter-day discovery of the soaring rhetoric of democratic freedoms is a cover for baser motivations. But it is more accurate to say that his “realistic” responsibility to protect American security has dovetailed with the “idealistic” belief in God, morality and an American mission in the world that has so often surfaced among American presidents.

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Bush has argued that American security will be greatly enhanced by the spread of democracy in the Middle East. Frustrated, powerless and ideologically brainwashed young men and women make far more likely candidates for suicide missions than people who have a voice in shaping their own destinies in a democratic nation. The hardcore al-Qaida Islamists are right in seeing that either their vision or the vision of liberal democracy will prevail in any given land. You can’t do both. Insofar as democracy prevails, al-Qaida types will have to go elsewhere for haven and support.

There is certainly a strand of idealism to be found in Bush’s recent speeches about promoting democracy around the world. He has argued that the desire for democratic freedoms is a God-given reality and therefore a universal human phenomenon. Morality demands that people be given access to such liberty, and it is part of America’s mission in the world to encourage it. No nation or people should be written off as uninterested in liberty or democracy.

This is a kind of natural law ethic rooted in a natural theology that assumes the existence of God and a shared human nature. Among the aspects of this God-given human nature is the desire for freedom. Once given the chance to move from tyranny to liberty, human beings are hard-wired to pursue it with all their hearts. Bush said in his Inaugural: “We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul.”

This natural law theology and ethic is not a new idea. It goes deep into western and Christian history and is enshrined in our Declaration of Independence. Those who are outraged by Bush’s recent articulation of it should dust off their copy of the Declaration to see that it is right there.

My defense of the Bush Administration on this point is not an exoneration of wrongs committed. We have violated our own principles in many ways, including mistreatment of people in our various detention centers and prisons, and in our lazy unwillingness to reduce our dependence on the foreign oil that props up undemocratic regimes like the one in Saudi Arabia.


But with the idea that all people have a God-given right to breathe free, and that American power is rightly used in promoting such freedom, I am in full agreement.

MO/JL RNS END

(David P. Gushee is the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.)

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