New York Times: Democracy is Bad for US Foreign Policy
- January 31st, 2011
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Unrest in Egypt after the revolution in Tunisia has been misreported as usual by the US media. from CNN to MSNBC they are stating that because of civil unrest in Egypt they believe there is a potential for extremist elements to commandeer control of the Egyptian Government and they have even discussed a potential for Al Qaeda infiltration into Egypt. This is insanity. President Mubarak is the puppet ruler the US has installed and backed along the lines of the Sadat regime.
Sadat was a US pawn and set the stage in motion that would eventually place Mubarak and his Despotic Government in control of Egypt. On Democracy Now, they interviewed 80 year old Egyptian Human Rights Activist, Nawal Al Sadawy and Democracy Now’s own Senior Correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous related himself to a number of important historically notables Egyptians and Human Rights Activists himself flew to Egypt and gave a report stating that the people just want to have democratic control over who they want in office. There has been no burning of American flags or anti US sentiment in Egypt at all. They do acknowledge that the tear gas used on them by the Egyptian police and military have US made stamps on them. This is as a result of the tens of billions of dollars in military aid the US pours into Egypt each year through it’s contractors. Egypt is second only to Israel in military aid received from the US government. But we all know that aid comes with a price. The price is the autonomy of your government. Ordinary Egyptians are fed up with catering to US whim as above the needs of Egyptian people. The Egyptian people are angry about the unfair distribution of wealth which came with Sadat when he got in bed with the US and Israel. This ventriloquism the US has imposed upon the Egyptian Govt has been maintain from Sadat through to Nasser up to and including Mubarak.
Funny with Arab control over Egypt one can see the need even more so now than ever for the institution of traditional Nile Valley African Forms of democracy. What made Egypt one of the longest lasting civilizations was because of it’s ability to serve the needs of it people and the fact that in African tradition people truly have control over their leaders, no King’s rule is absolute. If their leaders do not perform the will of the people they can be and at times have been removed. For more info see Democracy and Traditional African Wisdom located here.
I miss this country in which have the deepest love and Affection for. I wish the Egyptian people true freedom of choice in who will be their leader. I pray that leader is balanced and fair and performs the will of the Egyptian people not corporations or Western Powers like America. People deserve to live in happiness and true freedom. I will continue to update info as I receive it on whats happening in Kmt.
Ras~
New York Times: Democracy is Bad for US Foreign Policy
By Stephen Gowans
January 30, 2011 –
Here’s New York Times reporter Mark Landler on Washington’s reaction to the popular uprising in Egypt against the anti-liberal democratic, human rights-abusing Hosni Mubarak, a “staunch ally.”
Washington is “proceeding gingerly, balancing the democratic aspirations of young Arabs with cold-eyed strategic and commercial interests.”
In other words, democracy and human rights are fine, but not when strategic and commercial interests are at stake.
Landler goes on to say that Washington’s cold-eyed commitment to realpolitik and profits “sometimes involves supporting autocratic and unpopular governments – which has turned many of those young people against the United States.”
Well, there’s nothing amiss in Landler’s observation except his downplaying of the frequency with which Washington supports autocratic and unpopular governments – often rather than sometimes.
In Landler’s account of strategic thinking in Washington, it’s all right to support an “upheaval in Tunisia, a peripheral player in the region,” but a “wave of upheaval could uproot valuable allies.” And profits and strategic position demand the possibility be blocked.
After all, the “Egyptian government is a crucial ally to Washington.” And so arrests without charge, including of nearly 500 bloggers, will continue, with Washington maintaining a principled non-interference in Egyptian affairs.
Washington will also continue to tolerate the repressive national emergency law, as it has done since 1981. The law provides the legal cover Washington’s “staunch ally” needs to “arrest people without charge, detain prisoners indefinitely, limit freedom of expression and assembly, and maintain a special security court.” Because this is done in the service of safeguarding US strategic and commercial interests, Mubarak gets US military aid, diplomatic support, and an easy ride in the US media.
Compare that to US treatment of Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe. Even if all the allegations against him were true – and they’re not – the government in Harare wouldn’t come close to matching Mubarak’s disdain for the democratic and human rights values Washington claims to hold dear.
And yet Zimbabwe is deemed by the US president to be a grave threat to US foreign policy, its president denounced as a strongman and dictator, and its people subjected to economic warfare in the form of financial sanctions, while Mubarak is hailed as a staunch ally who must be supported against the democratic aspirations of the Arab street.
The key to this duplicity is that Mubarak has sold out Egypt to US profit and strategic interests, while Mugabe has sought to rectify the historical iniquities of colonialism. Clearly, from Washington’s perspective, Mugabe is serving the wrong interests. Indigenous farmers don’t count. Western investors do.
One wonders where overthrow specialist Peter Ackerman and his stable of nonviolent warrior academic advisors come down on this – on the side of the democratic aspirations of young Arabs or reconciled to the cold-eyed strategic and commercial interests of US corporations and wealthy individuals?
The question, however, may be beside the point. What matters is not whether Ackerman’s janissary Lester Kurtz wants to spout Gandhian bromides to angry Egyptian youths, but whether there’s money to organize and boost the revolutionary energy of the street and how much is being poured into a repressive apparatus to shut it down.
Andrew Albertson and Stephen McInerney (Don’t give up on Egypt,” Foreignpolicy.com, June 2009) have the answer.
The Obama administration has drastically scaled back its financial support for Egyptian activists fighting for political reform. US democracy and governance funding was slashed by 60 percent. From 2004 to 2009, the US spent less than $250M on democracy programs, but $7.8 billion on aid to the Egyptian military.
But even this imbalance overstates the meager support Washington has offered pro-democracy forces. Given Mubarak’s status as a paladin of US commercial and strategic interests, much of Washington’s democracy program spending has probably been allocated to programs that act as a safety valve to divert anger and frustration into safe, non-threatening avenues. Money available to facilitate a real challenge to Mubarak is likely either meager or nonexistent.
With the US establishment vexed by cold-eyed concerns about the need to safeguard imperialist interests against pro-democratic uprisings, champion of nonviolent democracy activism Stephen Zunes can give up whatever dreams he may have had about helping to organize an Egyptian color revolution. When it comes to real democracy, and freedom that counts, the funding cupboard is bare. Color revolutions are for cold-eyed promoters of US strategic and commercial interests, not upheavals against US-backed compradors.
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See Michel Chossudovsky, “The Protest Movement in Egypt: ‘Dictators’ do not Dictate, They Obey Orders“. Chossudovsky argues that “Washington’s agenda for Egypt has been to ‘hijack the protest movement’ and replace president Hosni Mubarak with a new compliant puppet head of state.”
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