9 – The Meaning of Freedom

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There’s a famous photograph from the World War 2 era that shows Truman, Churchill, DeGaulle, and Stalin walking across a courtyard. Churchill, DeGaulle, and Stalin are all stepping out with their left foot. Truman is stepping out with his right foot. The photo’s caption says, “Everybody’s Out Of Step But Harry.”

I recently read an article on the Internet that talked about how the people of North Africa and the Middle East are “yearning for freedom,” and how that yearning resonates with the American people. This is one of those times when I have to think that either I’m out of step or a lot of other people are.

 

Only students of military history noticed it, but the U.S. approach to war and victory changed in 1919. From the Revolutionary War in 1776 to the Spanish-American war in 1898, once the adversary surrendered and withdrew from the field of battle, the war was over.

After World War 1, that changed. The U.S. was no longer willing to just accept a document of surrender and go home. Starting with Germany in 1919, then Germany and Japan in 1945, and recently Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. has forced a defeated opponent to adopt a republican form of government, with a constitution similar to the U.S. Constitution. We did that because we sincerely believe our form of government is the best ever devised by the mind of man.

And it is—for us. Our mistake isn’t that we’re wrong in believing our constitutional republic is a wonderful form of government. Our mistake is in believing that every nation in the world would be better off as a constitutional republic. Let’s look at why that’s a mistake.

Of approximately 195 sovereign nations in the world, the vast majority are monarchies. Some are benevolent monarchies, like the royal family of Saudi Arabia. Many are dictatorships, kept in power by force of arms. But they all have one thing in common—they require nothing from the citizens except obedience. The citizens have no voice in who the monarch is. They have no input into what laws are passed. They have no recourse (short of revolution) if they don’t approve of something the monarch does.

The same thing is true of aristocracies, which Afghanistan was. Prior to the war, there was no overall ruler in Afghanistan. The nation was ruled by a group of warlords and tribal leaders. As with citizens in a monarchy, the average Afghan had no input as to who his local ruler was, or how his tribe or village was governed.

By contrast, a republic depends on the participation of its citizens. In fact, a republic can’t function without the participation of its citizens. And—this is very important to understand—a republic can’t function well without the enlightened participation of its citizens. But people who have only lived under a monarchy or an aristocracy don’t understand that. They find a republican form of government confusing and a little scary.

Weimar Germany is a good example of what happens when a constitutional republic is suddenly forced on a nation that has never had one. For more than 700 years the German people had lived under a series of kings and emperors. Nothing was expected of them, and for the most part they did well.

Then in 1919 they were suddenly forced into a constitutional republic. They had no idea how it worked or what was expected of them. Between the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and 1933, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor, not one single German government stayed in office for more than a year. Both the society and the economy were in chaos.

By 1930 there were more than 65 separate political parties, some with only one seat in the Reichstag. Parliamentary gridlock was a way of life, because a majority coalition would have required the agreement of at least 25 or 30 political parties, each demanding concessions for their members.

When Hitler took office in January of 1933 and began transforming the government back into a dictatorship, many people in Germany were relieved. In their view, things were finally getting back to normal. It isn’t unrealistic to say that the Weimar Republic contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler.

The only way we made constitutional republics work in Germany and Japan after WW2 was to keep those nations under military occupation for a full generation. Once a new generation had grown up under a republican form of government we were able to dial back our military presence, but we still have a significant presence in both nations.

Our U.S. government has shown a determined refusal to learn the lessons of history, and they seem on track to re-learn the lesson of Weimar Germany in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we withdraw our military presence in less than a generation, both nations will fall into civil war and possibly outside conquest.

 

Topic of discussion for another day: a generation may not be sufficient in Iraq and Afghanistan. A thousand years may not be sufficient. In the case of Germany and Japan, we made it clear that we were there as occupiers. We’ll make the rules, you follow them.

In Iraq and Afghanistan we’ve said repeatedly that we’re not there as occupiers. We’re “liberators.” You make your own rules. We’ll defend you and pay your bills until you can stand on your own.

We’ve spent the last eighty years developing a welfare society in the U.S. Now we’re developing welfare nations.

 

So how does this relate to the current situation in Africa and the Middle East? We’re hearing from both conservative and liberal sources that the people of Egypt and Libya are “yearning for freedom.” We believe their yearning will spread like wildfire from nation to nation until the entire region is aflame with the fires of revolution.

We believe that in their yearning for freedom the people will throw out the dictators that have oppressed them for decades, and elect benevolent governments that will bring peace and prosperity—and democracy—to the region. To hasten that process some are calling for the U.S. government to help them set up constitutional republics and hold free and open elections.

The problem with that thinking is that words mean different things in different cultures. When we hear the people of Egypt and Libya demanding “freedom,” we hear the word in its Western European context. That’s our culture.

Things I’ve read and heard lead me to believe that in the Islamic culture, the word “freedom” means something entirely different from what it does in our culture. When the people of Egypt and Libya say they want freedom, they’re demanding the freedom to install an Islamic theocracy. They’re demanding the freedom to live under Sharia law. They’re demanding the freedom to destroy the “Little Satan,” Israel. Their present rulers are denying them the freedom to do any of those things.

Giving the general population of most North African and Middle Eastern nations a republican form of government, with free and open elections, will almost certainly result in the election of governments dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, or some other Islamic fundamentalist group. In short order that government will give the people the “freedoms” they want. That would be very bad for the United States. It would be far worse for our only ally in the region—Israel.

 

Iran and Egypt are the two most populous nations in that part of the world. Combined, they have a population of more than 155 million people—more than all the other nations of the region combined. If the Egyptian people elect a fundamentalist Islamic government that turns into a theocracy, I believe they will join forces with the Iranian theocracy to form the backbone of an Islamic Empire that the other nations in the region will not be able to stand against. In a matter of less than a decade, that entire part of the world will be under the domination of an Islamic caliphate.

The Egyptian army is currently in control of Egypt. In fact, they’ve been in control of the country for almost sixty years, since they forced the abdication of King Farouk in 1953. Since that time every Egyptian president, including Hosni Mubarak, remained in power subject to the approval of the army’s ruling council.

Egypt—which is to say, the army—has been receiving U.S. foreign aid since 1979. They’re currently receiving slightly more than $1.3 billion a year. That money will buy a lot of shiny toys, not to mention funding a lot of very plush Officers Clubs. Hopefully, the army ruling council will realize that if they turn the government over to an Islamic theocracy, that money will go away—as will the power they’ve enjoyed for more than two generations.

So what should the U.S. do? Very little, beyond sending a quiet confirmation to the army’s ruling council that if they surrender the country to Islamic fundamentalists the flow of dollars will stop.

Unfortunately, that message can only come from our president, and given Obama’s obvious sympathy for all things Islamic, I’m afraid he isn’t going to exercise U.S. hegemony. He’s going to take the same position he took when the people of Iran were trying to overthrow their Islamic theocracy in August of 2009. “We don’t have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of another nation.”

 

That shows what a sad state we’ve come to. We have to put more hope and faith in the judgement of a foreign army than we can put in the judgement of our own president.