Democracy without wisdom and justice is chaos. Democracy is the rule of law and equal opportunity for every one. US democracy is not the ultimate one. It is quite the opposite to what Francis Fukuyama thinks. With the faults, deadlocks and misgivings of American democracy as it unfolds, the history has just begun. Money and the Media play a major role in American democracy .
He who has the money and controls the media can influence the course of the political scene. The number one enemy for democracy is greed. The second one is ignorance. The third is intolerance. We should not be lead by the success of American democracy or discouraged by Iraq failures when we try to evaluate democracy. American democracy has succeeded because of four factors which are not available to any other country in the world. Hence it is a mistake to expect others to follow the American model.
The first and most important is America is a nation of immigrants who escaped prosecution or came for better living. There are no tribal groups or religious sects or extended families. Such a mixed and a varied population is always peaceful and mainly concerned with fairness, and is unique to the US. The second is America's geographic location with two oceans and two neighbors only which make external threats minimum. Third, America is rich in resources. Fourth, the unit of democracy which is the citizen, is well-educated in the US. So it is unfair to expect poor countries or countries in a highly volatile region or countries in which a high ratio of the population is illiterate or countries with clear ethnic or religious division to follow the US example.
America may have intended to make Iraq a model for democracy in the region. What happened is that America's failure in Iraq proved the opposite and became a major setback for democracy in the region instead of the otherwise. This doesn't mean that the people of other countries should give in to authoritarian rulers and dictators. Rather, they should start from the same principle which is how can we achieve the rule of law, equal opportunity for every one, separation of the three powers and freedom of the press. Then review all possible forms of governments that may achieve that.
I can speak for my country Saudi Arabia where one always read that the country is ruled by a family or the ruler has absolute power or the ruler combines all three powers and controls the press. What people are missing is that Saudi Arabia is also unique in its history and establishment. The ruling family didn't take over the country. Saudi Arabia was created and founded from scratch. Before the founder of Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz Al Saud started his mission of unifying Saudi Arabia at the beginning of the last century, the land was mainly composed of fighting tribes and small cities scattered across the Arabian peninsula. Therefore the people of Saudi Arabia appreciate the role this family has played in unifying the country and Saudis will not disagree that this ruling house represents the unity of the country. So we are trying to work out our own model of democracy that will preserve our identity and will take into consideration our history and we believe a combination of tribal values and modern politics suits us best.
Hamad S Alomar
