It is now Bush who is challenging Islam in the Middle East which he wants to remake in the light of his own vision. It is a clash between American imperialism masquerading as democracy and Islam as the motor of history and the basis of political life in the Islamic world. As I listened to President Bush’s sermon on democracy and freedom in Iraq and the Middle East, I was reminded of Churchill who once said, “democracy is no harlot to be picked up by a man with a Tommy gun.” That is exactly what Bush is doing today.
America should also heed Robespierre’s warning about: “Armed Missionaries” bringing democracy to Islamic countries on the tip of precision - guided missiles. Today the dominant view in the Islamic world is that the Americans are in Iraq not to spread democracy but to steal Iraqi oil and make the Middle East safe for Israel.
“Our commitment to democracy”, Bush said in a speech on November 6, “is tested in Cuba, Burma, North Korea, Zimbabwe, China and the Middle East”. For the people in Pakistan, living under a thinly veiled military dictatorship, the speech was a bucket of iced water in the face. Why did Bush make no reference to Pakistan which started as a modern, progressive democratic state 53 years ago but is drifting away from the democratic path and sliding into darkness?
Bush’s democracy agenda must not begin with Afghanistan and end with Iraq which he invaded on the “wings of a lie”. If Bush is truly interested in promoting democracy in the Islamic world, why doesn’t he make a beginning with Pakistan?
America does not care for democracy in the Islamic world and has no intention of bringing about radical, political, social and economic changes in the region. No wonder, Bush’s speech about bringing democracy and freedom to the Islamic world, as expected, has fallen on deaf ears and left people cold.
It is now abundantly clear that no country in the Islamic world will ever be allowed by the United States to be truly democratic for the simple reason: were free, fair and impartial elections, the essence of democracy, the inescapable sine qua non, held tomorrow in the Islamic world, the resulting regimes would almost certainly be anti-American, anti-Israel, and pro-Islamic.