Democracy or Compliance? A Public Crossroads

People who’ve read me for awhile know that I believe that US rhetoric supporting democracy is usually empty words from either party. I’ve tried to argue in this space that for at least the past 50 years what we’ve valued is adherence to US policy policies. I’ve done this because I love my country enough to want it to carry out its publicly professed values even if it doesn’t serve our short term interests. I actually agree with the idea that if the US consistently supported liberty and human rights in its dealings with other countries and led by example, the world would follow and be a better place. It might well take generations, but it would happen.

With the latest crisis in Pakistan, we once again have a clear choice. We can stand with the dictator Musharraf and continue giving him military aid; or we can support the democratic forces opposing him through defunding the dictatorship and offering safe haven in our consulates and embassy to members of opposition parties who evade arrests. We won’t have to shelter jihadists because they aren’t the ones Musharraf has been arresting. We would be providing support to a largely secular opposition movement.

If we, as I’ve read we will, continue to provide Musharraf with military aid and otherwise legitimate his regime despite our verbal protests, we will be sending a powerful message across the Islamic world that we could care less about liberty and democracy. If we continue to prop up this dictator in the name of expediency, we should at least shutdown all of our “public diplomacy” efforts, because this action will drown out any words we might care to make.

I’d like to be proven wrong. I’d like President Bush to match action to his words and show that there are immediate, military-related consequences for dictatorship. And if he does, you can count on me celebrating that in this space.