Exporting Chaos

Rami Khouri, Editor-at-Large of the Daily Star in Beirut, provides a perspective on Anglo-American interventions in the Middle East.  He begins as follows:

Many of us in the Middle East instinctively hold our breath in fear when American and British leaders get together to discuss our region and its evolving politics and nations, as U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair did last week in Washington. They heaped accolades on the new Iraqi government headed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, and proclaimed yet another beacon of hope and change for the entire Arab world. Bush applauded the "watershed event." Blair, during a fleeting visit to Baghdad, called it "a new beginning" that will let Iraqis take charge of their own destiny.

Say what?

The view from the Arab world is rather different, based on our own history rather than imagined futures. Since Napoleon's conquest of Egypt two centuries ago, most of us have doubted the sincerity, legitimacy and efficacy of the Western armies that regularly march into our lands to deliver modernity through the muzzle of a French musket or the barrel of an M-1 tank. While Anglo-American politicians proclaim historic strides to replace Arab despotism and darkness with freedom and democracy, people who actually live here and know something about the Middle East shudder. For they witness Iraq and other Arab countries descending into an ever more fractious maelstrom of ethnic, religious and tribal violence. The link with U.S. and British policies is as clear and consistent as it is dangerous and destructive.

Well worth reading.

Comments

[Alan Brown]

The notion that imposing democracy on the Middle East will improve things is faulty.

What the Middle East really needs is national boundries that make sense, instead of those imposed upon them by foreigners.

Of course, when you try to discuss such ideas with George Bush and his followers, you tend to get the most undemocratic response.

As it turns out, the US isn't the democratic ideal. Many countries have more democracy. In any case, the level of democracy it has chosen is up to the US. Other countries have the same perogative.

And for that matter, if democracy is so great, why isn't the US for it at the UN? Probably because it doesn't want to have less influence on things than India.

Maybe democracy isn't the cure all knee jerk solution to every political problem.

[James]

For that matter, if democracy is so great, why don't its advocates pool together what is now their individually owned private property and use majority voting to decide what to do with it? I mean, here is an opportunity to create more democracy almost instantly. Why don't the advocates of increased democracy sieze it?