Arab Uprising Exposes Right-Wing Hypocrisy About Democracy
Remember 2003? How the West (well, the US and Britain) marched in to Iraq to depose the dictator Saddam Hussein and bring "democracy"? Obviously the democracy part hasn't really bedded in yet, but overall, aren't we Westerners nice? We spent over $1 trillion of our own hard-earned money to liberate those poor, oppressed Iraqis.
Cynics pointed out that the American/British love of "spreading freedom and democracy" (to use Bush-speak) was a little inconsistent: what about all the other Arab dictatorships? How about the central Asian dictators like Islam Karimov, America's "friend" in Turkmenistan, who had a thing for boiling his opponents alive? And what about the fact that America has backed so many nasty dictators in the past, in Latin America and elsewhere? Perhaps most of all, what about the American/British love-in with the brutish, fundamentalist regime in Saudi Arabia (and its huge oil reserves)?
But let's not be too cynical - didn't America cheer (and lend a quiet hand) as the Berlin Wall fell, and then revolution after revolution swept Eastern Europe? Yes, it did. Didn't rightwing media and politicians join the left to support the Iranian uprising after the rigged elections of 2009? Again yes.
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Of course, those rightwing commentators who cheered Bush and Blair into Iraq, who cheered the pro-democracy uprisings in Ukraine, Iran and elsewhere, are positively delighted with this turn of events. Of course!
Not.
More:
http://moronwatch.blogspot.com/2011/01/arab-uprising-exposes-right-wing.html