20 years on, Bush’s promise of democracy has faltered as the country went from one political crisis to the next
Published Date – Sat 25 Mar 23 at 12:40pm
by Brian Urlacher
Hyderabad: President George W. Bush and his administration have offered a variety of reasons to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Months before the US invasion, Bush said the looming conflict was about rooting out terrorism and seizing weapons of mass destruction — but also because of a “freedom deficit” in the Middle East, referring to a marked lag in government engagement in the region. Consider In light of later events, many of these arguments will appear to be untenable.
Insufficient reason
In 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell reflected on the flimsy rationale behind the main argument for the invasion: the presence of weapons of mass destruction. He acknowledged that “procurements have proven to be inaccurate and erroneous, and in some cases intentionally misleading.”
In fact, Iraq did not possess a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, as Powell and others claimed at the time. But after the WMD claims were proven wrong, the Bush administration’s rhetoric of a more free, open and democratic Middle East persisted and was harder to assess — at least in the short term. Bush assured the American public in 2003 that “the new regime in Iraq will be a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other countries in the region.”
He focused on this theme during the ground invasion, in which a coalition of nearly 100,000 U.S. and other allied forces quickly toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime. Bush said in November 2003: “The establishment of a free Iraq in the center of the Middle East will be a watershed moment in the global democratic revolution.” He also stated that the United States will pursue a “free forward strategy in the Middle East.” East. “
Twenty years on, it’s worth thinking about how this “forward strategy” has played out in Iraq and across the Middle East. In 2003, as Bush pointed out, there was indeed a “freedom deficit” in the Middle East, and authoritarian regimes ruled the region. Yet despite the enormous upheavals in the Middle East over the past two decades, many authoritarian regimes remain deeply entrenched.
Measuring the “freedom gap”
Political science scholars like myself try to measure the democratic or authoritarian character of governments in various ways. The nonprofit Freedom House evaluates countries on their democratic systems, whether they have free and fair elections, and their people’s civil rights and freedoms, such as freedom of speech, assembly and press. Freedom House rates each country and its level of democracy on a scale of 2 to 14, from “mostly free” to “least free.”
One way to think about the level of democracy in the region is to focus on the 23 countries and governments that make up the Arab League, a regional organization that straddles North Africa, the Red Sea coast and the Middle East. In 2003, the average Freedom House score for members of the Arab League was 11.45—more authoritarian than the global average of 6.75 at the time.
In other words, Freedom House’s 2003 report classified just over 46 percent of countries as “free,” but none of the countries in the Arab League met that threshold. While some Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, were ruled by monarchies during this time, others, such as Libya, were ruled by dictators.
Hussein’s nearly 30-year-long regime in Iraq fits the second pattern. Hussein was part of a 1968 coup led by the Ba’ath party, which wanted all Arab states to form a united state but was also known for human rights abuses. The Ba’ath party relied on Iraq’s oil wealth and repressive tactics against civilians to stay in power.
The fall of Hussein’s regime in April 2003 produced a nominally more democratic Iraq. But after battling a series of sectarian insurgencies in Iraq for eight years, the US was left with a weak and deeply divided government.
after the invasion of iraq
The U.S. invasion in 2003 succeeded in toppling a brutal regime — but building a healthy, thriving new democracy proved more challenging. Rivalry between Iraq’s three main groups – Sunni and Shia Muslims and the country’s largest minority, the Kurds – has paralyzed early attempts at political restructuring.
While Iraq today has a constitution, a parliament and holds regular elections, the country struggles with popular legitimacy and practical aspects of governance, such as providing children with basic education.
In fact, in 2023, Freedom House continues to rate Iraq as “not free” in its measure of democracy. Since the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011, Iraq has gone from one political crisis to another. From 2014 to 2017, much of western Iraq was controlled by the extremist group Islamic State.
Rampant government corruption sparked a series of anti-government protests in 2018 and 2019, prompting a violent crackdown by the government. The protests prompted snap parliamentary elections in November 2021, but the government has yet to form a coalition government representing all competing political groups.
While Iraq’s recent crisis has avoided a civil war, the militarized nature of Iraq’s political parties poses a constant risk of electoral violence.
democracy promotion
While Iraq continues to face profound political challenges, it is worth considering more fully U.S. efforts to promote democracy in the region. In 2014, widespread protest movements associated with the Arab Spring toppled dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya. In others, such as Morocco and Jordan, monarchs have been able to make concessions to the people and maintain control by delaying cuts in public spending and changing government ministers, among other things.
Yet even where the Arab Spring appears to have succeeded in changing political institutions, maintaining a stable democracy has proven challenging. In Egypt, the military has reasserted itself and the country has steadily slipped back into authoritarianism. In Yemen, the political vacuum created by the protests marked the start of a devastating civil war.
Today, members of the Arab League have an average Freedom House democracy score of 11.45 — the same as they were on the eve of the Iraq invasion. It is difficult to know whether U.S. efforts to promote democracy hastened or delayed political change in the Middle East. It’s hard to know whether a different approach would yield better results. Yet the data—at least when social scientists measure these things—strongly suggest that the vision of Iraq as an inspiration for the transition to democracy in the Middle East has yet to materialize. www.theconversation.com
