Sharansky on democracy...

Natan Sharansky is one of my heroes....

"What's happening today in Iraq has nothing to do with the question whether promoting democracy is a good idea, or whether people in Iraq want to live in freedom." The Iraqis' refusal to defend Saddam Hussein and courage in voting for a new constitution and parliament settled that argument for Mr. Sharansky. Iraq's Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites are, he says, engaged in a different, no less ferocious struggle over "identity"--his current obsession, and the subject of his next book.

The victory of Hamas in last year's Palestinian elections is widely considered a defeat for the Bush Doctrine. Mr. Sharansky recalls seeing friends at the White House the day of the vote. "They said, 'Oh, it's the first time, it's a good experiment.' And I said, 'I fully disagree. It's a terrible experiment!' Now of course they come back and say, 'You see, you want to promote democracy and you get Hamas.'"

As he argued in his bestselling book, the West confuses the ballot box with democracy. "The election has to be at the end of the process of building free society," he says. "If there is no free and democratic society, elections can never be free and democratic."

Having not even attempted a "bottom up" overhaul of its politics and economy, the Palestinians weren't ready for a poll, he says, nor were other post-Cold War Western protectorates. He faults successive U.S. administrations for pushing votes before their time in Bosnia right after its war ended in 1995, Iraq and in the Palestinian territories. "Nobody thought in 1946 to have elections in Germany and Japan."

Mr. Sharansky says his belief that Arabs can stomach democracy hasn't wavered, but that not many others ever shared it. Typical was former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's smiling quip to him, "Good for you Natan, that you convinced Bush of things that don't exist." With benefit of hindsight, Mr. Sharansky says that, "Democracy is a rather problematic word, because democracy is about technique. I would prefer freedom. I would say people don't want to live under constant fear." It's as much as he'll concede.

His bigger concern is the West's own weak stomach. This is a familiar theme for Mr. Sharansky and others who waged the Cold War battle on the other side of the Wall. Prosperous, stable societies can lack, by these lights, moral clarity and courage and are prone to cynical compromises or gullibility. Under totalitarianism the challenge is to fight evil (he paraphrases the British writer Melanie Phillips), and in free societies it is to see evil.

For much of the last century, "the policy of the free world was to build and strengthen friendly dictators," says Mr. Sharansky. "The more the free world enjoys their freedom the more they will be reluctant to support any freedom [for others]. I saw it in my personal life [in the Soviet Union], I see it to this day. They say the Arabs are not capable of this--such a strong racist statement." He pauses. "That's interesting. It's politically uncorrect [sic] to be a racist, but it's so politically correct now to say that promoting democracy is a bad idea."

Mr. Sharansky says Washington didn't give the freedom agenda a chance. When the administration briefly pressed Arab dictatorships, if only with tougher rhetoric, "there were results," he says, citing Egypt's release of dissident Saad Ibrahim and Lebanon's Cedar Revolution against the Syrians.

But the Saudis, Egyptians and others rightly figured the storm would pass. Hosni Mubarak bowed to pressure to hold presidential elections, then rigged them and for good measure imprisoned his opponent, Ayman Nour. "It's such a clear return to the old days when from the top you have to try to decide with the leaders who don't represent anything and ignore all your principles," says Mr. Sharansky.