# Posted 4:28 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

EVERYDAY AMERICAN VALUES: Daniel Drezner has just put up a must-read post about how US field commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken the initiative in promoting democracy and compensating civilians who became accidental targets of American bombs.

Dan is absolutely right when he says that

a signal virtue of U.S. diplomacy is the ingrained habit of trusting subordinates to innovate and adapt to local circumstances, and then copying those innovations when they work.

All I can add to Dan's point is a bit of historical context. According to Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis, the United States' successful effort to transform Germany and Japan rested heavily on local commanders' efforts to adapt American values and institutions to local circumstances.

In most cases, such commanders received no direction from above. According to Gaddis, they simply acted on the belief that the Germans and Japanese deserved exactly the same rights as US citizens had on the homefront.

There was, however, some recognition on the part of higher-ups in Washington that the best way to transform Germany and Japan was to ensure that American soldiers held foreigners to the same standards that they did their fellow Americans. According to John Dower, the foremost American historian of modern Japan, the training films shown to US soldiers departing for Japan emphasized that American values were the key to reform in Japanese society.

If shown today, such films' uncritical glorification of the United States and its values would provoke immediate accusations of cultural imperialism. While I wouldn't recommend the replication of such propaganda today, the fact remains that promoting democracy in Iraq will depend more on the occupation forces' ability to instill democratic values than on their ability to appreciate the local populations' cultural heritage.

Even so, this is not necessarily cultural imperialism. First of all, the values in question are not American or even Western. They are the values shared by democratic nations in Latin America, East Asia, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Indian subcontinent and even parts of Africa.

Perhaps more importantly, the occupation forces will transmit such values more by setting the right example than by spreading propaganda. Then again, the simple fact of holding elections privileges democratic values over all others.

The critical point to recognize here is that elections provide the Iraqi people a means of expressing themselves. If this sort of fostering self-determination counts as cultural imperialism, then the accusation has become meaningless. As I see it, true democracy cannot be imperial.

All in all, one of the most important reasons that I have much greater faith in the Pentagon's ability to promote democracy in Iraq (as opposed to the State Department's), is that rank-and-file American soldiers have a long tradition of sharing democatic values with all those they encounter. Even our generals and admirals tend to adopt this same straightforward approach.

While American diplomats have often risked their lives and reputations for the sake of human rights, their measured, cosmopolitan approach is not best-suited to countries in need of a total transformation. From where is stand, the best hope for democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan to just let our soldiers do what their grandfathers did in Germany and Japan: be themselves. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion