>> You seem to be saying that Bush was pushing for democracy at exactly the right time throughout the Middle East, yet the Middle East still has a VERY large economically disadvantaged and uneducated population.
I wouldn't say it was "at exactly the right time" -- but it was the only time he had. You have to start somewhere. The region is ignorant and economically disadvantaged for a number of reasons, and it takes a confluence of events to bring about change. One of those events is an interest in a shift toward democracy. If you sit around and wait for those societies to become educated you have a very long wait, indeed. The number of books translated into Arabic throughout the region each year is measured in the hundreds (not thousands), which effectively closes the entire region to advancement.
Yet, the technological revolution was underway and it was reasonable for Bush to believe the time was right. And, as we've seen, it was -- events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Iran, now Syria -- these are not accidents. The accident was that the US did not have competent leadership that would have given these uprisings a better opportunity at success. This is not a time when we needed an absolute incompetent neophyte -- a man with no meaningful experience -- running the US. He simply did not have any idea what to do or not do.
That's not to say it is all Obama's fault these things have not worked out well thus far. This is a shift that will, under the best of circumstances, take years, decades, to complete.
It is in a sense the "chicken or the egg" problem. It will be difficult for these countries to transition to democracy as long as the religious intolerance and tribalism are intact. At the same time, democracy will do more than just about anything else to eliminate the religious intolerance.
I think Bush was on the right track, but by the time the potential for change took root, the US had been engaged in wars which inevitably would have tied the hands of any successor to Bush. But the problem was exacerbated by the incompetence of Obama. A strong US president could have, quite possibly, made a difference during the Iranian uprisings and that would likely have translated into better outcomes in other countries. I don't believe any of these events in the region would have happened had it not been for the Iraq War, personally. |
