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Democracy is bad news for terrorists
By Janet Daley
(Filed: 02/02/2005)
An understandably bitter little missive was posted on the headhackers' website on Monday. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi wanted the world to know that the elections in Iraq were not going to slow him down. The cause of terrorism was not daunted. In bloodcurdling terms, he swore vengeance on those who had had the temerity to ask the Iraqi people how they would like to be governed: "Let Bush and Blair know that we are the enemies of democracy."
Fair enough. We may as well all lay our cards on the table. Democracy is certainly out to get Zarqawi - and this is a fight to the death. You might think it an unequal battle: that democracy, being inhibited by law and accountable to the mass of the people, would be at a serious disadvantage in a struggle with utterly ruthless terrorists.
That has been the implicit (and sometimes even explicit) view of most of the opinion-forming media in Europe for the past year. Elections would solve nothing. In the murderous chaos of post-war Iraq, democracy was an irrelevance or a sham. Who could believe that it would do any good to wave a ballot paper at people who were happy to blow themselves up in the name of - what? Islam, sectarian power struggle, anti-Americanism? Only those credulous morons in the Bush Administration who seemed to think that everybody in the world wanted to be free.
But it was not the view, interestingly, of Zarqawi himself, who seems to have rather more political insight than the European intelligentsia, the BBC and the Liberal Democrat Party combined.
In a letter intercepted by American forces more than a year ago, he offered his thoughts on the dangers of impending democracy to the leadership of al-Qa'eda. Their cause and their activities could, he said, be dealt a disastrous blow by the prospect of democratic elections in Iraq. To continue the terror campaign would be extremely difficult "because of the gap that will emerge between us and the people of the land".
With an eloquence worthy of an exceptionally well-written political speech, he continues: "How can we fight their cousins and their sons and under what pretext after the Americans, who hold the reins of power from their rear bases, pull back? Democracy is coming and there will be no excuse thereafter."
This is a man who can see the writing on the wall. George W Bush could scarcely have put it better himself. That is why Zarqawi's announcement on Monday is so desperate, swearing vengeance on the democrats who have put his entire mission in such peril. It is why he and his brother terrorists threw absolutely everything that they had into the past six months.
Their only hope was to create a campaign of such vicious, anarchic violence that the democratic initiative would have to be aborted. And every European know-it-all who shook his head sagely, and said that elections should be delayed indefinitely because of that campaign, was playing into their hands.
Democracy is not a delicate plant to be kept under wraps until the perfect conditions are achieved for it to flourish. It is the only possible antidote to terrorism which, whatever its claims of popular support, is inherently totalitarian in its structure and its contempt for life.
Should the worst happen, says Zarqawi in his illuminating letter, and Iraq succumb to the curse of democracy, then the only recourse would be "to pack our bags and search for another land, as is the sad recurrent story in the arenas of jihad".
In other words, the American and British invasion will have closed down another of our outlets. Afghanistan - the dream haven provided by the Taliban - went first. It is now in the hands of the democratic Satan and irretrievably lost to the forces of our struggle. Iraq falling to the enemy that is, to the control of its own population would leave us no choice but to up sticks and find some other
poisonous hell-hole of a dictatorship to call home. We are, he makes it mournfully clear, running out of boltholes.
That is, as it happens, precisely what the Bush Administration has in mind: to chase the terrorists around the world, unleashing democracy in one God-forsaken corner after another, until the entire swamp of Middle Eastern tyranny has been drained and there is nowhere left for an al-Qa'eda murderer to hang his explosive belt.
Washington, unlike Old Europe, whose relationship with democracy has been something of an on-again, off-again affair, believes that political freedom is not a reward for good behaviour: it is a necessary step to achieving it.
But, happy as the fact is, it remains a puzzle. Why are the ballot box and the universal franchise such powerful weapons that they can derange even the most determinedly disruptive forces? Even though they entail such hampering scruples as the need to be bound by law and public opinion, they seem to have the effect of holding up a cross to a vampire. It is almost tempting to believe that there is such a blinding light that emanates from the democratic principle that even the shamelessly evil must shield their eyes and run.
But really, in the end, it is all about taking power away from the lawless. When the people can elect their own spokesmen, who does the suicide bomber represent? Democracy makes politics the only game worth playing: it delegitimises terrorism and turns it into mere criminality, which a mandated government is licensed to prosecute.
Terrorist groups find themselves creating "political wings" so as not to be left out, and that is the beginning of the end, as Zarqawi knows, of their fearsome despotism. As the man said: "Democracy is coming, and there will be no excuse thereafter."
CSM said:Great post!
