Another Failure Looming: Bangladesh

Bangladesh has long been one of the earth's poorest democracies. And yet it remained a democracy. It has long been one of the clearest case studies for the ill-effects of deforestation. As the highlands became denuded of its forests, the entire nation became subject to annual cycles of devastating floods and equally devastating droughts that have helped to keep Bangladesh poor. And yet it remained a democracy. An imperfect Democracy, but who are we to throw stones.

When 9/11 happened, I was struck by something. Bangladesh was one of the poorest Muslim nations, and yet remained largely immune to the sweeping tides of fundamentalist Islam that influenced Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc. Bangladesh had the poorest, most neglected population, yet remained more open to democracy than to fundamentalist Islam or what is too often its alternative: military dictatorship. Bangladesh stood out to me as a nation we needed to focus on, to learn what can make Islam and democracy coexist. We also needed to focus on it as something to nurture. Bangladesh was a place we could help and while we helped them we could be fighting fundamentalist Islam while proving that we can be a good friend to democratic Islam. Bangladesh was one of our best opportunities to PREVENT the spread of fundamentalist Islam even as we fought it elsewhere.

Bush and the Republican controlled Congress ignored this opportunity, as they ignored many others, obsessed as they were in the completely unrelated attack on Iraq, an attack that made us LESS safe, not more safe. And while Bush ignored Bangladesh, the case study in how democratic Islam can survive even under crushing poverty, that crushing poverty finally started to create cracks in the democracy. As I predicted after 9/11/01, ignoring Bangladesh led to the spread of fundamentalist Islam into Bangladesh by September 2005. Around then a wave of some 300 bombings led by a growing Bangladeshi fundamentalist movement occurred, signaling that Bush's neglect of that small nation was opening up new recruiting grounds for fundamentalists. I said in 2005 that we had missed our opportunity in Bangladesh and it would soon go the way of other poor Muslim nations: a battle ground between military dictatorship and fundamentalist Islam, two equally repugnant options.

Well, it is now 2007 and the Bangladeshi military is declaring democracy a failure. While Bush mires us in Iraq, McCain wants an escalation in Iraq, and Republicans are picking a fight with Iran, we have been losing yet ANOTHER front in the war against fundamentalism. We are losing in the Sudan, in Somalia, in Afghanistan...even in Bahrain. We have opened Iraq up to fundamentalist forces that were never previously there. And now Bangladesh is becoming the next Afghanistan or Somalia. This will give al-Qaeda ANOTHER recruiting ground, another place for bases.

This is ANOTHER failure of Bush and the Halliburton Republicans. We had our chance for decades to address the environmental and economic problems of one of the very few Muslim democracies...and we failed. 9/11 suggested to many of us, as I wrote at the time, that Bangladesh needed our attention at that exact moment to shore up our relationship with moderate Islam. Instead an insane and illegal invasion if Iraq soured our relationship with moderate Islam and Bangladesh slid further towards collapse. In 2005 we saw that the collapse of democracy in Bangladesh was starting and perhaps was now unavoidable.

And now in 2007 we see the first step towards full collapse into the same military dictatorship/fundamentalist dictatorship battle that we have already seen playing themselves out in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Somalia and dozens of other nations. We are losing another one, Mr. Bush. Heckofa job, Georgie.

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