Jihadis and democracy

Richard Clarke is back with a piece in today's New York Times Magazine arguing that Bush's freedom intiative is misconceived and will be ineffective in the war on terror. He makes the obvious point that terrorists can exist, even flourish, in democratic states and points out that the Jihadists are not interested in crushing democracy as such, but in re-establishing the Caliphate [which of course would entail a crushing of liberal democracy].

His key point:

President Bush's democracy-promotion policy will be appropriate and laudable at the right time in the right nations, but it is not the cure for terrorism and may divert us from efforts needed to rout Al Qaeda and reduce our vulnerabilities at home.

What is needed, he says, is a "battle of ideas" that will convince people throuhout the Muslim world that jihadist terrorism is a perversion of Islam, but this is something that Bush cannot undertake because several Middle Eastern experts [I wonder if that includes Professor Cole] tell him that any American involvement would only be counterproductive since US forces are associated with the annihilation of Fallujah.

Clarke badly misrepresents Bush's Iraq initiatives. We are engaged not in some simple mechanistic attempt to force democracy on unwilling people, but in an effort to create a situation in which a whole range of liberal reforms -- personal freedom, economic freedom, political freedom and national self determination through consensual processes -- are possible. This is Bush's expanded definition of "freedom" and it comprises a set of ideas that are competing effectively with the Jihadist attempts to restore the Caliphate and impose their own, narrow interpretation of Islamic law on the populations of the region.

Moreover, the recent experience in Iraq shows that American involvement can stand for much more than just military assaults on terrorist dens. Without American involvement there would have been no opportunities for Iraqi citizens to participate effectively in their own government. The resentment that the unnamed experts cite certainly exists in some quarters, but it must contend with another, powerful set of ideas that were manifested in the recent Iraqi elections. Because of Bush's initiatives the battle of ideas has already been set in motion and is well underway, but Clarke just doesn't recognize it for what it is.