Comments on: Western powers still don’t know how to deal with Arab democracy

By: Ben Israel

Ben Israel — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:58:05 +0000

I see Egypt is holding a referendum on various constitutional amendments (among which prevent the “wife of the President” from being a foreigner-I guess they are writing off women as President) this weekend. They were drawn up two weeks ago. Any REAL democracy will draw up things like this in a drawn out process in order to get input from all sectors of society (e.g. in the US 2/3 of both Houses of Congress plus 3/4 of the states must ratify). Here no on is given any time to digest and discuss the proposals. The article in the New York Times says the Muslim Brotherhood and military cliques are supporting them. Thus, we see they are attempting to ram these things through without any discussion. This is “democracy”?

By: HS

HS — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:13:56 +0000

Ben Israel, are you really wanna give the US the credit for the civilian regimes in South Amererica, where they backed every fascist dictator and every corrupt oligarchy? That’s a joke.
And what you call pro-American and pro-Western democracies are just company and lobbyist controlled capitalist regimes with very low social justice and more benefits for the wealth. Just like the USA itself.
Having a parliament and a right to vote is one step to liberation, but not real democracy, where the people are in control.

By: Maath Musleh

Maath Musleh — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:03:30 +0000

Well Ben, the revolution is not about switching regimes, that’s too simple.

The revolution that took place in the Arab World is the revolution of people who refuses to be bullied anymore, who refuses to be oppressed anymore, who feel Freedom for the first time since ages. Anything after that (throwing off regimes or other goals) is just a mater of time. The main thing now is that there’s no more fear. If those regimes still hanged on there for 20 more years, these will be 20 years of struggle for freedom rather than years of fear that the Arab people in for decades.

As for the US, yes we saw a great example of a democracy that they installed in the region, IRAQ, and we saw how the recent demonstrations are being repressed, and how the PM publicly warned people from demonstrating peacefully. I’m not saying the US is a devil, they might have helped installing good values in other parts of the world, but in this part of the world, the interests are just too high.

And by the way, thanks but no thanks, we don’t want to establish pro-American governments, we want to establish a government pro it’s people,then anything else doesn’t matter. Remember, those presidents and governments that are being thrown off are pro-American.

Thanks for your insightful comments.

By: Ben Israel

Ben Israel — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:45:30 +0000

From what I see, there hasn’t been ANY real revolutions in the Middle East, at least since the one in Iran in 1979. Egypt and Tunisia had military cliques oust tired and unpopular leaders (i.e. unpopular with the military clique) from the Presidency, using popular demonstrations as the lever to force the old guy out. No new regimes have yet been instituted and the old Establishments are still in power. No one and nothing has replaced them.
Libya also had an old, decrepit President who had lost touch with his power base and something like a civil war situation is currently under way. It is unclear where that is heading.

I know Leftist/Progressives like to think that the US is some sort of anti-democratic monster out to exploit and dominate the world. Then how do you explain the Marshall Plan that fortified the democracies of Western Europe? How do you explain the fall of all the old military regimes that were in power in Latin America during the 1970′s and the establishment of civilian regimes there? How do you explain the spread of democracy in the Far East, from Japan to South Korea to Taiwan to the Philippines…all countries that have close ties with the US? How do you explain all the satellite Communist bloc countries of eastern Europe throwing off their dictatorial regimes and establishment of pro-American and pro-Western democracies?

The question is how close are the Arab countries to setting up real democracy and not just having mob rule?

By: Carly Beckerman-Boys

Carly Beckerman-Boys — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:10:30 +0000

An interesting and insightful comment. In reality, all regimes place their own stability ahead of promoting so-called universal values – and they always will because being in power changes everyone’s perspective.

However, the line “Stop analyzing and get to work. Stop trying to influence the outcomes; accept them” is a sentiment that should be widely promoted. Western media is still scaremongering and the general public would rather be afraid and proved right than hopeful and proved wrong. Support democracy. Follow me on twitter @CarlyBBoys