Freely-Elected Tyrants

Michael Ledeen:

To those who argue that the flight from freedom is limited to one group or another, of one area or another, or one religion or another, I can only recommend remedial reading of contemporary history. And for those who say we should just abandon such people to their own misery and oppression, I can recommend a more ambitious reeducation course, along with a repeat of Strategery 101. For it is not just an academic question; tyrants hate America, and will invariably try to kill or dominate us. We need to shed all illusions about the nature of such regimes, above all the conceit that they are, after all, "just like us," and whatever differences we have can be resolved by patient negotiation, or cultural exchange, or simple deterrence. I don't believe any of that. I think they are implacable enemies of all free societies. I think the very nature of those regimes compels them to attack us as best they can. I think they have waged war against us for a long time (the terror war was clearly in full swing by the late Seventies, and probably started back in the late Sixties), and will continue to do it until they either win or lose. The policy question, on the answer to which our own survival may well depend, is how best to achieve their defeat.

Revolutionary regimes have fallen both because their own people turned against them, and because they were defeated on the battlefield. In each case, the revolutionary ideology was discredited. We humiliated the fascist revolution in the Second World War, and fascism was drained of its mass appeal. We do not know how European fascism would have ended (or indeed if it would have ended) if the Axis had won the war, but I have suggested that China today constitutes the first case of a mature fascist regime, one in which the ideology is now bloodless, but whose regime remains very nasty, corrupt, and potentially aggressive. Communism had lost much of its appeal in other Warsaw Pact countries even before we defeated the Soviet Empire. Years before the wall was breeched, very few people wanted their country to become a new Bulgaria, and Pope John Paul II once wryly forecast that the last communist on earth would be a North American nun.

Islamofascism seems to me to be on the same track to the losers' circle. The Iranian people loathe it, and would gladly trade it for the Westminster model or their own fine 1906 Constitution. Most Iraqis, even though they are still voting along 'religious' lines, have shown little affection for a new caliphate or Islamic republic. No sooner had they voted for the religious blocs than they sat down and renegotiated the division of power. It's not textbook post-electoral politics, but it bespeaks a distinctly non-fanatical approach to government. Several recent polls show that al Qaeda's popularity ratings are careening downward, while our own are rising. I think these positive symptoms are the result of four main factors: the failure of the terrorists to drive us out of the Middle East, the recognition by most people that the terrorists, from al Qaeda to Hezbollah (that is, from Sunni to Shiite), are evil and must be defeated, and the near-universal conviction that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not the sort of place where one should want to live. That mullahcracy is the closest thing on earth to the much-ballyhooed "caliphate" so dear to the mouths of the jihadis, and while some alienated middle-class Muslims might dream of its wonders, most think it stinks. As it truly does.

Moving from police state to liberal, democratic society is possible, even when a nation has never known freedom nor Western institutions. Even when the country is poor and desolate. Even when the people have been conquered, and resent their conquerors.

This is what we accomplished in Japan, remember?