|
Contributors
Daniel Pipes- Contributor
Daniel
Pipes is director of the Middle
East Forum, a member of the
presidentially-appointed board of the U.S.
Institute of Peace,
and a prize-winning columnist for the New York Sun and The
Jerusalem Post. His most recent book, Miniatures:
Views of Islamic and Middle Eastern Politics (Transaction
Publishers) appeared in late 2003. His website, DanielPipes.org,
the single most accessed source of information specifically
on
the Middle East and Islam, offers an archive and a chance
to sign-up to receive his new materials as they appear. [go
to Pipes index]
 Can
Hezbollah and Hamas Be Democratic?
Not acceptable...
[Daniel Pipes] 3/24/05
If Al-Qaeda
renounced terrorism, would the U.S. government welcome its
running candidates in American elections? Had the Nazis denounced
violence, would Hitler have become an acceptable chancellor
for Germany? Not likely, because the tactics of Al-Qaeda and
the Nazis matter less than their goals.
Similarly,
Hezbollah and Hamas are unacceptable because of their goals.
These organizations are important elements of the Islamist
movement that seeks to create a global totalitarian order along
the lines of what has already been created in Iran, Sudan,
and in Afghanistan under the Taliban. They see themselves as
part of a cosmic clash between Muslims and the West in which
the victor dominates the world.
Washington,
trying to be consistent in its push for democracy, prefers
to ignore these goals and instead endorses involvement by Hezbollah
and Hamas in the political process, pending their making some
small changes.
These signals
began last week when President Bush
stated that although Hezbollah, a Lebanese group, is "a
terrorist organization," he hopes it will change that designation "by
laying down arms and not threatening peace." White House spokesman Scott
McClellan then elaborated on this comment by specifying
the two alternatives: "Organizations like Hezbollah have to
choose, either you're a terrorist organization or you're a
political organization."
Bush
himself explained further what he meant a day later,
presenting elections as a method to shed the terrorist designation:
I like
the idea of people running for office. There's a positive
effect when you run for office. Maybe some will run for office
and say, vote for me, I look forward to blowing up America.
I don't know, I don't know if that will be their platform
or not. But I don't think so. I think people who generally
run for office say, vote for me, I'm looking forward to fixing
your potholes, or making sure you got bread on the table.
Hamas a Palestinian
organization, Secretary of State Rice
then noted, could also evolve in the right direction once
it enters the democratic process:
When people
start getting elected and have to start worrying about constituencies
and have to start worrying not about whether their fire-breathing
rhetoric against Israel is being heard, but about whether
or not that person's child down the street is able to go
to a good school or that road has been fixed or life is getting
better, that things start to change.
The theory
implied here is that running for office with its emphasis
on such mundane matters as fixing potholes and providing good
schools will temper Hezbollah and Hamas.
Count me
skeptical.
The historical
record does not support such optimism. When politically adept
totalitarians win power democratically, they do fix potholes
and improve schools but only as a means to transform their
countries in accordance with their utopian visions. This generalization
applies most clearly to the historical cases (Adolf Hitler
in Germany after 1933, Salvador Allende in Chile after 1970)
but it also appears valid for the current ones (Khaleda Zia
in Bangladesh since 2001, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey
since 2002).
Then there
is the matter of their undemocratic intentions. Josef
Goebbels explained in 1935 that the Nazis used democratic
methods "only in order" to gain power. Looking at Islamists,
then-assistant secretary of state for the Middle East Edward
Djerejian explained in 1992, "While we believe in the principle
of ‘one person, one vote,' we do not support ‘one person, one
vote, one time'." Khomeini's Iran indicates that Islamists
do manipulate elections to stay in power.
Washington
should take a principled stand that excludes from the democratic
process not just terrorists but also totalitarians using the
system to get into power and stay there. It is not enough for
Islamist organizations to renounce violence; being irredeemably
autocratic, they must be excluded from elections.
In a famed Supreme
Court dissent in 1949, the eminent justice Robert H.
Jackson argued for the arrest of a neo-Nazi rabble-rouser
in Chicago on the grounds that not doing so "will convert
the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact." The
same imperative for self-protection applies also to international
politics.
Even if Hezbollah
and Hamas promise a change in tactics, America or for that
matter, Israel and other Western states should not accept
them as legitimate political parties. tRO
This
piece first appeared in the New York Sun
copyright
2005 Daniel Pipes
§
|
