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Monday, January 31. 2011

The Rise of Democracy

Been watching the news from Egypt the last few days. The 30-year reign of Hosni Mubarek is probably over; even the Egyptian ambassador to the U.S. appeared to concede as much.

The protests against Mubarek have been taking place for five days and CNN reported earlier about 1,000 prisoners escaped from a prison just north of Cairo. I wonder if any of the bookies are putting odds on which day President Mubarek resigns. He can’t last much longer. The police and army won’t stand much for hurting or killing their friends and families.

Well, that might not be true. Men have a high capacity for inhumanity to man. Egypt is notorious for its methods of incarceration and interrogation.

Mubarek may be a notorious, ruthless dictator, but, like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, what’s the alternative? Some Western-style democracy aligned with the United States? Half the signs in those “democracy” demonstrations are anti-American. We might get lucky and have a post-Mubarek government that isn’t openly hostile to the U.S., sort of like we have in Iraq.

There’s a bust if we ever got involved in one. The current government is most aligned with Iran. But, the whitewash of the Iraq tragedy began the day President Obama declared there wouldn’t be any justice for the crime of starting that war. Whenever someone in the media brings up how the war was sold to the American public — how we were lied to — they get slapped down for bringing up the past and not focusing on the future.

Hell, it isn’t even a topic of debate on shows like Real Time With Bill Maher. Right now there is a generation of young people growing up not knowing how or why we got into a war in Iraq.

There’s an entire generation that actually fought in that war and have no idea that 21 years before we started the war in Iraq we made Saddam Hussein an ally after he started a war with Iran.

But I digress. Egypt is exploding and democracy, Middle East style, is about to take place. The old guard will leave the country, or, if they’re unlucky, they’ll be put on trial and convicted of all types of crimes and get put to death in a most hideous fashion. A la Saddam Hussein. His sons and grandson got off easy when they were killed in a spectacular shootout in July 2003.

Oh, those were exciting time! These were two seriously bad men who, by any accounts, deserved the most lethal justice. Hussein the Elder was hanged many months later after his frenzied defense in what passed for a court of law in Iraq.

Sounds like I’m defending the Husseins, seriously bad individuals, but what is the alternative in Iraq today? The government — our government — wants to paint a rosy picture so that when our troops do finally leave, we will have at least an illusion of success. It’s a hard thing to swallow, sending our sons and daughters to fight and die in a futile war. We been there and done that in Vietnam. But, before 2020, Iraq will be fully aligned with Iran and there will be continuing sectarian warfare between the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds.

The Iraqi Kurds might even have an official state, just like they have today, except with official recognition. That wouldn’t sit too well with the Turks who have been fighting a Kurdish rebellion on that border for decades, maybe longer.

Everyone wants self-determination, including the Middle East. It’s just that, for some that means becoming an Islamic State, like Iran or Saudi Arabia. There is a large segment of Egypt’s population that wants to create an Islamic state and if that be the will of the people, who are we to stand in the way.

That doesn’t sit too well with many Westerners, especially those who hold extremist views in their respective religions: Christianity and Judaism. Fundamentalist Christians want to believe Armageddon is on the way just as surely as the sun will rise in the East tomorrow so they vigorously defend Israel against every and all threats, including perceived threats from the Islamic movement in Egypt. And that movement just might gain control of the Egyptian government.

On the other hand, there are quite a few pro-Western people in Egypt as well, as there were in Iran in 1979, but the most vocal, the most violent tend to get their way, as happened in Iran. But, most analysts say there is, at most, a third of the population aligned with the “Muslim Brotherhood,” hardly a majority, but certainly a large and vocal block — and the most organized. Our own president proved what a well-organized political machine could do in an election.

Many of the same analysts tell us the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t even want to control government, just have a strong hand in a strong parliamentary system. Right now, the president of Egypt has all the control, enforced by the military.

Along with all that political ramifications, there is the loss of all law and order. Citizens are arming themselves to protect their neighborhoods and businesses from looters. In that Northern Egyptian town where the large prison break occurred, a NBC news team said it passed a dozen or more police stations that had been abandoned, looted and then burned.

When the prisoners escaped from that prison, they also broke into the armory and took most, if not all, of the weapons too.

Egypt is truly on the brink of profound and fundamental change. Hosni Mubarek is all but done. He may officially carry the title of President, but he no longer has overall authority, if any authority at all.

Early Monday the Egyptian military released a statement saying they would not turn their guns on the Egyptian people. In other words, Mubarek no longer has control over the military.

Here’s where this gets crazy in our neck of the woods: Friday I was headed out to dinner with a friend and he was listening to a right wing radio nut talking about the demonstrations in Egypt. According to this radio wing nut, what is happening over there is, of course, all the fault of President Obama. The reason: President Obama said it would no longer be the business of the U.S. to meddle in the affairs of other countries.

The radio wing nut went on to talk about how the Internets, cell phones and other means of communication had been shut down by the Egyptian government. Then my friend suggested we might lose the Internets here as well, to terrorist attack or the government shutting it down, just like the Egyptian government did in that country. Really?

The crazies are still afoot here. We hardly have room to throw stones at other countries and their crazies. This is off topic, but the birthers are about to get a law passed in Arizona (of course) saying anyone who runs for president must have an original birth certificate to get on Arizona’s ballot. I wonder how many people can actually produce an original birth certificate — not a copy.

And then there are the various state attorneys general who have filed suit against the health care law and the federal judge in Pensacola, FL who said in a court decision the individual mandate is unconstitutional because the federal government does not have the authority to force citizens to purchase anything.

Democracy … are the Egyptians sure they really want it?

Posted by Tim Forkes in NEWS and POLITICS at 12:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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