Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Not Goode News?
The bizarre crusade by Virgil Goode and Dennis Prager against Keith Ellison's use of the Koran in his swearing-in ceremony points a potential problem for Bush: the growing anti-Muslim sentiment among religious conservatives. Since Bush often justifies our presence in Iraq by the need to build a functioning democracy in the Arab-Muslim world, if his base increasingly sees Islam as irredeemable, they might start bailing on the war. And all Bush has left is his base. Support for his conduct of the Iraq War has fallen to single digits among Democrats, and not much higher among Independents. Recent polls have even showed support plummeting among Republicans. If the "religious right" gives up on Bush's war for democracy in the Middle East, he'll really be done for.
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I will note that the operative word is "we'll really be done for." Bush will be gone in less than two years. However, it is a key point and true. Everything tried in the middle east since the 1950's has failed. If the democracy project in the middle east fails it will partially be because not only religious conservatives but all traditional conservatives have come to the conclusion that where Moslems rule, constitutional government can't. Against the Sovie Union American Conservatives were mainly sure that Eastern Europeans wanted freedom and the fall of the wall bore this out, West of the Oder. If the Arab world keeps to Kipling's question "Why brought you forth from bondage, our beloved Egyptian Night." Americans will revert to a "rubble don't make trouble" view of these countries. We will buy their oil, bomb their nuke sites, and otherwise let them slaughter each other without mercy. A third gulf war more horrible than the previous ones will be the result.
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