Jonathan Zimmerman: A right reason and the wrong reason to oppose Bush's plan in Iraq
Here's a good reason to oppose President Bush's proposed troop surge in Iraq: It won't work. We've already tried versions of this plan, and it has failed. There's no reason to believe it will succeed now.
Here's a bad reason to oppose the surge:"Iraqi culture" isn't ready for democracy. We shouldn't impose--or even encourage--a system of government or a way of life upon a culture that doesn't share it.
And here's why it matters: by invoking the invidious term" culture," we ignore vital differences among the Iraqis themselves. We caricature and demean an entire people, often in the guise of defending them.
What is a" culture," anyway? Anthropologists like Franz Boas and Margaret Mead developed the concept a century ago, to signify the bundle of values and habits that a given population shared. For many of their contemporaries, of course, only the West -- and only white people -- possessed culture. But Mr. Boas and Ms. Mead insisted that everyone had culture, and that no single one was inherently superior to another.
The culture concept was one of the great intellectual achievements of the 20th century, helping to undermine much of the racism and ethnocentrism that marred our own society. But the concept imposed distortions of its own, especially the absurd idea that every group had a single culture -- and that this culture imprinted itself on every individual in the same way.
Consider, again, the commonplace claim that"Iraqi culture" is inconsistent with"democracy." Tell that to Maysoun al-Demalouji.
Never heard of her? I didn't think so. Ms. al-Demalouji is a member of the Iraqi parliament and a former deputy minister of -- catch this -- culture. Her idea of Iraqi culture includes tolerance, free speech and human rights: in other words, the beliefs and practices of democracy.
As a minister, Ms. al-Demalouji fought to protect the Iraqi national dance troupe from threats of brutality and assassination. She also defended female fashion models, who were targeted by Islamist death squads as well as by conservative religious figures inside the government.
"Iraq is without a doubt an Islamic society, but Islam is not our only culture," Ms. al-Demalouji recently told The New York Times."All the other cultures are being denied by this government." Got that? Iraq is made up of many cultures, not just one. And we do violence to its diversity when we assume otherwise.
Aah, you might reply, but Ms. al-Demalouji is not a"real" Iraqi. She's a cultural half-breed, someone who sacrificed her authentic and indigenous Islamic heritage for the secular wiles of the West. Wrong. Iraq has a long and vibrant history of secular intellectual ferment, centered in the Al Mutanabbi section of Baghdad. Even during the totalitarian hell of Saddam Hussein's regime, writers in Al Mutanabbi published illegal tracts under fake names. Their culture was so renowned in the Arab world that it generated its own slogan:"Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, Baghdad reads."
Oh, you say, that's just Baghdad. Out in the provinces, everyone wants Islamic rule. You know the drill: women in veils, orthodox religion in schools, strict control of the arts. The authentic and traditional Iraqi culture, unadulterated by the West.
Wrong again. In 2004, Oxford Research International published a careful survey of Iraqi public opinion in 16 cities, including all of the nation's major geographic and ethnic regions. The result? Just 20 percent of Iraqis favored an Islamic state. Nearly three-quarters said they"strongly agreed" with the idea that Iraq should be a democracy.
I have no idea what the numbers would say now. Nor do I know what we can or should do about the morass in Iraq, which seems to get worse every day. But here's what I do know: If you say"Iraqi culture" is hostile to democracy -- or to freedom, or to tolerance, or to the arts -- it's you who is hostile to Iraq.
In America, this hostility is eminently bipartisan. We hear it on the right, where politicians and talk-show impresarios now ascribe our failures in Iraq to the"fact" that Iraqis don't share or want democratic values. Critics on the left make the same point in a different idiom, arguing that America has no right to"impose" or urge its distinctive political culture on anybody else.
This is cultural arrogance, dressed up as cultural sensitivity. It sets us up as the ultimate arbiters of"real" Iraqi culture, which is more complex and varied than any of us realize. Most of all, it discounts and degrades the millions of Iraqis who clearly want freedom and democracy. I don't know if we can help them attain it or not. But we'll never find out if we pretend that"Iraqi culture" is a singular entity--and singularly different from our own.