President Bush believes that toppling Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq should be the first step towards a comprehensive political reconstruction of the whole Middle East. According to the President a new, democratic Iraq, can become a model for the Arab and Muslim worlds. Political liberty in the Middle East will strengthen its stability and improve security for America and the world. The president's vision has met with enthusiasm among his followers and skepticism among some scholars and observers of Middle Eastern politics.
Speaking recently at the Washington research organization, the American Enterprise Institute, President Bush said that "success in Iraq could begin a new stage for the Middle Eastern peace process and set in motion progress toward a truly democratic Palestinian state." It could also serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region. Iraq is fully capable of moving toward democracy, assured the president, who called pessimism about his project "presumptuous and insulting" to the Arab and Muslim world.
Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, praised President Bush for his boldness and his challenge to the status quo in the Middle East.
?I think it was partly September 11, a real wake-up call to just who we have been in bed with these many years, a real highlighting of who our friends are and who our enemies are,? she said.
?It was a turning point. I also give a lot of credit to George W. Bush, because he is a man with, yes, a Manichean view of the world," Ms. Pletka said. "There is good and there is evil. And I think that this kind of moral clarity is a very good thing for a President of the world's strongest and greatest nation to have.?
Ms. Pletka called President Bush a man with a vision, who dares to dream of something great and difficult. But for some this kind of dream is a dangerous mirage.
Jon Alterman is the director of the Middle East program at the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies. He thinks putting Iraq back together after an invasion will be complicated.
?It's going be very hard to do. It's going to be hard to put Iraq together again, not so much after a U.S. led war, but after the 30 years of brutality the Iraqis endured under Saddam Hussein. It is not just flipping a switch and turning the country to democracy,? he said.
Of chief concern is the territorial and national integrity of Iraq. Politically entrenched Sunnis, discriminated Shiah, separatist Kurds, secularist and Islamist elements, Turkish, Assyrian, Iranian and Jewish minorities: all of these must first decide what kind of society they wish to build.
Marina Ottaway, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes democracy requires a sense of common national destiny.
?Before Iraq can become a democratic country, it has to solve fundamental problems about what kind of country it is,? she said. ?Is it going to me a multi-ethnic country? Is it an Arab country? Is it a Muslim country? These are very deep issues. There are divisions that go very far.? If Saddam Hussein is overthrown by an American-led invasion, the first post-war task will be to assure stability and peace within the country. This is expected to be achieved by a U.S. military administration working with a council of civilian Iraqi advisors. But sooner or later, Professor Ottaway thinks power will have to pass to local bodies and include diverse, often contentious interest groups. She finds it difficult to imagine how this transition will occur.
Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute is confident that Iraqis will manage to overcome their divisions. She recalls that pre-Saddam Baghdad was a multi-ethnic, secular, cosmopolitan city. ?I think it is fully possible to work to forge an Iraqi state, to forge an Iraqi national identity that isn't Shiah or Sunni or Kurdish, even Arab, because Kurds are not Arabs, but Iraqi,? she said.
?And if you talk to people about how Baghdad was before Saddam Hussein, you'll hear that people were very uninterested in religion. Sixty to seventy years ago Baghdad was a city who majority population was Jewish. Iraqis are enormously secular, very nationalistic, for good and for bad, and there are genuine possibilities for the future,? Ms. Pletka said.
Azar Nafisi, an Iranian scholar now with the School of Advanced and International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, is anxious about the possible war in Iraq, but believes the secular, democratically inclined people in the region will regain their voice once Saddam Hussein is gone.