mindmeld,
Re: I am a believer that the status quo in the Middle East was no longer acceptable.
And I'm absolutely convinced that the American public haven't much of a clue as to what is really going on there. Do Americans know that the U.S. government is responsible for blocking over 30 UN Resolutions condemning Israel for its illegal occupation and brutalization of Palestine? A tiny percentage do, because our corrupt and one-sided mainstream media has deliberately engaged in a program to brainwash the public.
Is the public aware that under Saddam Hussein, Iraq briefly enjoyed the greatest degree of personal liberties, free education, full employment, universal health care and prosperity that that nation has ever enjoyed? Are Americans aware of the sophistication of the arts that flourished in Iraq under the Ba'athist regime until U.S. interventions and sanctions undermined Iraqi culture?
I find that the American public is dangerously uninformed about the malicious destabilization that the U.S. government has employed in the Middle East for the past five decades in an attempt to thwart pan-Arabism. U.S. foreign policy, largely a bag of dirty tricks, has done more for the destabilization and demoralization of the Middle East than any other force.
The U.S. government has had a continuous policy of supporting despots and dynasties and suppressing democracy in the Middle East, in spite of the rhetorical flourishes that continuously bombard the naive. The U.S. government's first major success along these lines was the overthrow of the democratically elected and very popular Mossadeq government in Iran. In this shameful incident in 1953, the C.I.A. engineered a coup d'etat that ended the most promising experiment in democracy in the Middle East, replacing Mossadeq with the compliant, despotic and loathed Shah, Reza Pahlavi. Please read Stephen Kinzer's excellent history, "All the Shah's Men" for the story of duplicity and anti-democratic deception that the U.S. government engaged in: tinyurl.com
In the case of Saudi Arabia, we have consistently supported the anti-democratic monarchy. There is no real effort to democratize that nation. The U.S. position with regard to democracy in Saudi Arabia is pure hypocrisy.
In 1990-1, the U.S. removed Iraqi troops from the monarchy of Kuwait. The corrupt al-Sabah family has ruled that nation with the full blessing of the U.S. government for generations. These are absolute royalists, and there has been no effort on the part of the Kuwaitis to move toward more democratic rule. And no complaint from the Clinton or Bush Administrations regarding the intransigence of the al-Sabahs to share power.
So when you talk of democracy in the Middle East, I'm frankly wondering where in the world you are refering to? The only places that I see the artificial and fraudulent use of the buzzword "democracy" is as it applies to regimes that the Israelis and their eager servants in the U.S. government hope to destabilize.
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Re: But the liberals on this thread continue to deny that anything good is happening in the Middle East.
That's not quite true. You might want to review the brief history of the al-Jazeera network. This has to be one of the very best developments in the region, with millions of Arabs getting something close to BBC quality news from a basically unbiased source. This I find to be a great advance over the typical state-controlled media in most of the Middle East. This is a very democratic development for the Middle East.
Ironically, al-Jazeera has had its offices in both Kabul and in Baghdad bombed by the U.S. military. The military denies that this was deliberate, but most observers know that the military lies all the time.
So, mindmeld, how do you make this ugly fact fit into your pollyannish version of the U.S. military bringing democracy to the Middle East? |
