Austin Bay Blog

Hat tip realclearpolitics.com.

From Beirut’s Daily Star, an article by Michael Rubin. Speaker-elect Pelosi should read the article but -alas– she won’t get it. Until twenty years from now when she’ll be for it, though she was against it at crunch time.

Key excerpt:

Bush is not anti-Arab, though. He went farther than any predecessor to support Palestinian statehood when, on June 24, 2002, he declared: “It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation … My vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security.” Certain Palestinian groups, often with foreign support, squandered their opportunity by re-embracing violence. Bush’s belief in liberty extended beyond the Palestinians, though. While his father’s advisers sacrificed Lebanese freedom for the stability of the Syrian military presence until 2005, Bush sought actual Lebanese independence.

Autocrats across the region distrust Bush for entirely different reasons. To leaders in Cairo, Damascus, Tehran and Riyadh, the Palestinian cause is little more than a useful rhetorical tool to distract their own citizens from failures closer to home. These leaders do not blame Bush for his policies toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, but rather dislike him for his rhetoric of democratization and reform.

The US occupation of Iraq may not be popular anywhere in the Arab world, but scenes of Iraqis celebrating Saddam Hussein’s downfall infused Arab regimes with particular unease. Many Arab leaders surround themselves with sycophants. Delegates at Egypt’s National Democratic Party conference in September, for example, repeatedly interrupted President Hosni Mubarak’s speech to inform him of their admiration for him and the love of ordinary Egyptians. But, outside the posh convention center, ordinary Egyptians cursed their president for corruption, stagnation and his desire for a royal succession. Arab leaders may try to convince themselves that such adoration in sincere, but their reliance upon multiple security services signals their recognition of reality. 

Yes.

I should add this excerpt:

White House pressure for reform antagonized these leaders, as the whining nature of editorials in state-run newspapers demonstrated. Previous US administrations, both Democrat and Republican, spoke of human rights, democracy and transparency, but did not push the issue. 

Versailles condemned the Arabs to satraps. British and French imperialists thought that democracy was beyond the “Bedouins.” What racial and ethnic bunk. At one time Italians, Germans, and Japanese couldn’t handle it, either, or so the ”conventional wisdom” went. We’re now in a world where democracy isn’t a dream but a necessity — an awkward, rattle-trap, slow, murky, politics-ridden necessity.

For the record, beware of so-called “Arabists” who aren’t pro-Arab, but are pro-Arab autocrat. There is an enormous, embittering difference. 

As for the article’s knock on Arab autocrats, heck, America’s media elites surround themselves with sycophants, too.

Another chilling excerpt:

As the realists again rise triumphant, stability will trump reform. The same figures who Bush now embraces backed Syria in Lebanon, and ensured Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s grip on power after ordinary Iraqis heeded President George H.W. Bush’s February 15, 1991, call for “the Iraqi people [to] take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside.” These realists did not blanch as Saddam massacred tens of thousands of civilians.

New policies may revive old dictatorships. European governments find it easier to trade with the Revolutionary Guards-operated companies in Iran than press for economic opportunities for ordinary Iranians. Former US ambassadors to countries like Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey would rather cash in on their connections to ruling parties than see old faces disappear upon the whim of the electorate.

Nor will Arab civil society organizations be able to rely on their “progressive” counterparts in the West to defend liberalism and reform. Hatred of Bush trumps declared principles. Because Bush made democratization and reform the centerpiece of his Middle East strategy, many Western progressives dismiss them as priorities or even as desirable. After all, in progressive rhetoric how can Bush be both an idiot and correct?

Instead of democracy, many progressives have come to romanticize “resistance.”

Read the entire essay. No, it’s not a pre-mortem. The fight for democratic, open systems will continue throughout this century no matter what John Murtha and George Galloway have to say.