By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday offered no concessions to ease the grip on public life exercised by his authoritarian regime.
New York City March 30th, 2011 12:54 pm
In Egypt, we hated the charismatic Nasser for his alliance with the Soviet bloc, loved Sadat who paid for the romance with his life, and long tolerated the urbane Mubarak for maintaining the world Sadat had created--even if it meant having to repress his own "street." Starting with our CIA caper in Iran in the 1950s, we overthrew any leader who held out a promise of a secular modern state in the Middle East and beyond since we considered such tendencies tantamount to being pro-Soviet. In Afghanistan, we armed an Islamic lunatic fringe willing to shoot down Soviet helicopters and hasten the end of the Soviet Union even if it left us with Al Qaeda to deal with. Not only have we appeared to turn a blind eye to each Israeli massacre of innocents over the years, for most Arabs and Muslims in that part of the world, Israel is merely a client state of the U.S., and it is our nation that must bear responsibility for Israel's actions and perennial stalling on a peace agreement the ultimate shape of which just about everyone is said to know. We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan at enormous cost in lives and treasure to all concerned and appear to be willing to stay in Baghdad and Kabul as long as we have in Germany, Japan and Korea to maintain our global hegemony. The U.N. Security Council and NATO are looked upon by the rest of the world as merely adjuncts of the U.S. government.
When an American president encourages military intervention in the affairs of a foreign state and labels it a humanitarian enterprise, it befuddles students of history who can recall not only the recent "collateral damage" in such places as Iraq and Afghanistan, but in all the theaters of war in which we have participated since airplanes first carried bombs early in the twentieth century.
The latter day neo-conservative brain trust's preoccupation with spreading "democracy"--writ large during the last Bush administration--now reverberates in the events we see taking place in Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Libya and Yemen. There are no doubt, men and women in all of those countries who have long desired the establishment of true democracies and freedom from oppression. Given our history, however, it should not surprise anyone that our apparent effort to resurrect the notion of "making the world safe for democracy," is sometimes met with skepticism. And in the apparent congruity of American and European policy on these matters, (no "freedom fries" in this round), other skeptics even get a whiff of the ongoing economic crisis which still threatens the new economic order and puts a premium on harmony between the great powers. It is little wonder that in another of today's Times' articles, Tom Friedman has put out a call for prayer.
Recommend Recommended by 19 Readers
Note: I was pleased to discover upon revisiting the above posting that it was the third ranked highlighted post for the day and had received 19 recommendations. The Times has shown a surprising openness to, shall we say, less than mainstream points of view.
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