Democratization has been part of American political rhetoric since the Westminster speech by President Ronald Regan in 1982, which subsequently created the National Endowment for Democracy and its four core institutions: the International Republican Institute (IRI), the Democratic National Institute (NDI), the Center for International Private Entrepreneurship (CIPE), and American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS). All of which had the aims of providing support to local organizations with hopes of democratization and originally focused on Latin America and Eastern Europe, now however the largest (funds wise) regional program in each of these institutions is the Middle East, in a large part due to our spending in Iraq.
Originally the administration provided the explanation the there were ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda that reasoning provide wrong it moved on to justifying the war by explaining that it was due to the Iraqi regimes’ position of weapons of mass destruction, which to proved to be erroneous, the Bush administration than used democratization to explain its actions in Iraq.
The United States’ use of democratization of the Middle East to justify the war in Iraq is in many ways harming other efforts and causes to aid the Middle East and other regions of the world, true, genuine democracy. The term democratization and freedom are loosing their meanings.
So many words seem to lose their meaning when they are adapted by politicians to justify a foreign or national policy objective. What is even more frustrating for me is when the public at large accepts these new definitions without question. Because we live in a free society, we have an obligation to become informed, critical and imaginative: to envisage how our state can become an even better place to live. In the course of this exercise, citizens breathe life into the principles of democracy and freedom.
By: Tammy Mack on April 14, 2008
at 2:09 pm