First Stirrings of Democracy in the Middle East

[Frodo]

i hate to give Bush credit for anything, but you have to admit -the Iraq War may have opened a Pandora's Box, but it seems not all that has transpired has been unmitigated evil:

Unexpected Whiff of Freedom Proves Bracing for the Mideast

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: March 6, 2005

CAIRO, March 5 - The leaders of about half of Egypt's rickety opposition parties sat down for one of their regular meetings this week under completely irregular circumstances. In the previous few days, President Hosni Mubarak opened presidential elections to more than one candidate, and street demonstrators helped topple Lebanon's government.

The mood around the table in a battered downtown Cairo office veered between humor and trepidation, participants said, as they faced the prospect of fielding presidential candidates in just 75 days. "This is all totally new, and nobody is ready," said Mahmoud Abaza, deputy leader of the Wafd Party, one of Egypt's few viable opposition groups. "Sometimes even if you don't know how to swim you just have to dive into the water and manage. Political life will change fundamentally."

The entire Middle East seems to be entering uncharted political and social territory with a similar mixture of anticipation and dread. Events in Lebanon and Egypt, following a limited vote for municipal councils in Saudi Arabia and landmark elections in Iraq, as well as the Palestinian territories, combined to give the sense, however tentative, that twilight might be descending on authoritarian Arab governments.

A mix of outside pressure and internal shifts has created this moment. Arabs of a younger, more savvy generation appear more willing to take their dissatisfaction directly to the front stoop of repressive leaders.

In Beirut on Saturday, a crowd of mostly young demonstrators hooted through a speech by the Syrian president, Bashar al-NixonNow, as he repeated too-familiar arguments for pan-Arab solidarity, without committing to a timetable for withdrawing Syrian soldiers from Lebanon.

Young protesters have been spurred by the rise of new technology, especially uncensored satellite television, which prevents Arab governments from hiding what is happening on their own streets. The Internet and cellphones have also been deployed to erode censorship and help activists mobilize in ways previous generations never could.

Another factor, pressure from the Bush administration, has emboldened demonstrators, who believe that their governments will be more hesitant to act against them with Washington linking its security to greater freedom after the Sept. 11 attacks. The United States says it will no longer support repressive governments, and young Arabs, while hardly enamored of American policy in the region, want to test that promise.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/international/middleeast/06mideast.htm
 

[Frodo]

Well, Frodo, your honesty and openness is extremely refreshing, and gives me hope that people of different political beliefs will continue to be able to work together for common good. When my pacifist friends explain to me that they just can never support war and violence, I tell them that peace comes from democracy, since democracy do not go to war with one another and are historically very stable. It is also dictatorships which engage inm genocide, I tell the "Stop Darfur"ians. I think we all have the same goals here, but with these monsters who value no human life, like Hitler or Saddam, those who are willing to countenance the worst are more effective because we can talk to these hugs in their own language. Hence, the successes of Churchill, Reagan, and W Bush.

It would be a mistake to take Bush for a conjurer of cheap tricks, Frodo. Why don't you check out Bush's inaugural address again with an open mind and tell me if he isn't really talking about certain basic ideals that we all agree on and, I think, wish for the entire world.

I've long said that I hope more than anything else that Bush will take my words about the Iraq war when it initially began, crumple them up into a little ball, do a tap dance on them, and then shove them into my mouth so I can eat them.

I said what I did when the war began because I believed it would be true, not because I hoped it would be true.

i hear you, 

among the reasons why i opposed this war, and participated in antiwar demonstrations against it was because i feared that if we were to invade Iraq, that it would undermine America's security by presenting Osama bin Ladin (the original perpertrator of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001...NOT Saddam Hussein) with a whole new generation of recruits -as if on a silver platter- to help him mount attacks against the continental United States -attacks that could take any form, be it chemical, biological, radiological, or in cyberspace.  we were already pulverizing his network in our first invasion in Afghanistan (which i did support, given the direct connection between it and the perpetrators of 9/11 that i could perceive), so why divert our energies to a dictator who had nothing to do with the terror attacks?

i did not see the connection (direct or indirect) between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 (let alone Al Qaeda and Osama bin Ladin), and i never saw Saddam Hussein as anything like the threat posed by Al Qaeda, unless you consider Israel proper as an informal 51st state.  i certainly did not believe he had nuclear weapons or the ability to make them (though he most certainly desired to), but i thought it quite possible that he had residual stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and i believed he would use them on our troops as they approached Baghdad, as military analysts and experts kept telling us.  apparently he did not have chemical or biological weapons either, as they failed to materialize as our troops entered Baghdad.

i worry that the lesson that our enemies in Iran and North Korea and elsewhere have learned from our war in Iraq, is that the United States will not dare invade them if they have nuclear weapons.  so they are frantically trying to develop them as quickly as possible so as to protect themselves from any repetition of what had befallen the regime of Saddam Hussein.  this is the legacy that i am seeing as a direct result of this war we are still fighting.  if weapons proliferation was a problem during the interim period between the end of the Cold War and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, they will become an even greater problem in the wake of the Iraq War.

in addition, the entire world have seen the extent of our military might, and therefore its limits.  it will not pass unnoticed that we are not as invincible as we may seem if we are being bloodied on a daily basis by guerrila fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan.

having said all that, i hope i am wrong, and Bush is right.  maybe the Iraq War did open the floodgates for democracy and liberalization, for it is a welcome sight to see democracy taking root throughout the Middle East, with more questioning the customs regarding women that extremists say are based on the Qu'oran.  i would love to see this region become what it was when Baghdad and Cairo were the cosmopolitan centers of science and learning when Europe was still in the grip of the Dark Ages and the theocratic grip of the Roman Papacy.   granted, they will develop democracy in a way that suits their own particular culture, but that surely adds to the diversity of alternatives to that offered here in the United States. 

[Frodo]

BUMP for those who haven't seen this thread yet -and what I have said on the first page remains true for me to this day.