Arabs should reject America's imposed 'democracy'

[spindrifter]

Daily Star Lebanon
By Khalaf Ahmed Al Habtoor

Saturday, September 09, 2006


The US is behaving as though it has the patent on "democracy." In the same way it exports Uncle Ben's Rice, Starbucks and F16s to the Middle East, it is eager to impose its own stars-and-stripes brand of "rule by the people for the people." The US wants us to believe that democracy comes in one-size-fits all like a "made in America" T-shirt. It has attempted to cloak this system of governance, which has its roots in Ancient Greece, with an almost religious aura. Those who challenge it are unfairly dubbed communists, fascists, despots or dictators.

It's time to break this contrived taboo. We must analyze America's motives in trying to remake this region in its own image. We must question whether Western-style democracy is right for us. And we must ask ourselves whether there is a better solution; a home-grown solution based on who we truly are and what we need.

Washington arrogantly tells us democracy is the only way forward for this region in spite of the fact that the Arab world has functioned without it for thousands of years, producing remarkable thinkers and accomplishments in the fields of literature, mathematics, philosophy and science.

This is not to imply that any of our governments are perfect - far from it - but neither are Western so-called democracies where citizens are often indoctrinated into believing they are free when many are not.

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http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=75355

[partylessinOhio]

1. Ewe, the truth hurts. BushCo. doesn't speak for me.

The US has no right to impose it's will on any other country. We don't even have our own house in order.

[kenny blankenship]

2. democracy as such is not the problem, "exporting" it to create

what are in fact, dependent weak puppet govt's that's a big problem. First the "export" is not exactly invited nor is it peaceful. Secondly the creation of compliant protectorate "democracies" through mass violence engenders widespread resentment in the victim country and a violent response.
Let's just leave democracy as a concept out of what the Bushlerites are trying to accomplish. When the Anglo (and later Anglo-American) oil interests used to promote and prop up Kings throughout the oil-rich Islamic Crescent, they weren't really creating sovereign states and self-sufficient monarchs, they were creating puppets. The "Kings" depended on foreign troops and foreign intelligence services for protection from their own peoples. We aren't trying to create sovereign states and democracies in this "democratic" age either. The moment any such client government, one of those democracies we like to take credit for, like Lebanon, so much as sniffs in disapproval at some goal or method of US policy that government becomes a target of harsh rhetoric calling the legitimacy of the gov't into question, and perhaps some mass murder & mayhem directed by Washington and a candidate for "regime change"--if not subject to immediate airstrikes and invasion.

[enigma000]

3. at least the region is talking about democracy

That's a change from the past. I can't fault some pressure, by the West, on governments there to implement some economic and political reforms.

[Igel]

4. He's done well under the current system in the UAE.

Very well.

http://www.habtoor.com/anenemycalledapathy/h-1.htm