Promoting “Dignity”

American Democracy promotion is so last decade. But fear not, there’s a new American promotion-du-jour for the Middle East in store, Obama style.

Naive or insightful? You decide:

..Democracy does not fill stomachs, alleviate malaria, or protect neighborhoods from marauding bands of militiamen. Democracy, in other words, is valuable to people insofar as it allows them first to meet their basic needs. It is much harder to provide that sense of dignity than to hold an election in Baghdad or Gaza and declare oneself shocked when illiberal forces triumph. “Look at why the baddies win these elections,” Power says. “It’s because [populations are] living in climates of fear.” U.S. policy, she continues, should be “about meeting people where they’re at. Their fears of going hungry, or of the thug on the street. That’s the swamp that needs draining.

If we’re to compete with extremism, we have to be able to provide these things that we’re not [providing].” This is why, Obama’s advisers argue, national security depends in large part on dignity promotion. Without it, the U.S. will never be able to destroy al-Qaeda. Extremists will forever be able to demagogue conditions of misery, making continued U.S. involvement in asymmetric warfare an increasingly counterproductive exercise — because killing one terrorist creates five more in his place.

Ahh, so neat. Unfortunately, Obama’s foreign policy advisers miss the part where they explain how an American promotion of “dignity” in Dahieh, south Lebanon and the Bekaa will drain Hezbollah out of its supporters.