"Is President Bush's plan to spread democracy turning into a fiasco?"

[Pirate Smile]

Islam and Power

Is President Bush's plan to spread democracy turning into a fiasco? It doesn't have to. But it does need to change.



By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek

Feb. 13, 2006 issue - George W. Bush is not a man for second thoughts, but even he might have had some recently. Ever since 9/11, Bush has made the promotion of democracy in the Middle East the center-piece of his foreign policy, and doggedly pushed the issue. Over the last few months, however, this approach has borne strange fruit, culminating in Hamas's victory in Gaza and the West Bank. Before that, we have watched it strengthen Hizbullah in Lebanon, which (like Hamas) is often described in the West as a terrorist organization. In Iraq, the policy has brought into office conservative religious parties with their own private militias. In Egypt, it has bolstered the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the oldest fundamentalist organizations in the Arab world, from which Al Qaeda descends. "Democracies replace resentment with hope, respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbors, and join the fight against terror," Bush said last week in his State of the Union address. But is this true of the people coming to power in the Arab world today?

-snip-
There is a tension in the Islamic world between the desire for democracy and a respect for liberty. (It is a tension that once raged in the West and still exists in pockets today.) This is most apparent in the ongoing fury over the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a small Danish newspaper. The cartoons were offensive and needlessly provocative. Had the paper published racist caricatures of other peoples or religions, it would also have been roundly condemned and perhaps boycotted. But the cartoonist and editors would not have feared for their lives. It is the violence of the response in some parts of the Muslim world that suggests a rejection of the ideas of tolerance and freedom of expression that are at the heart of modern Western societies.

Why are all these strains rising now? Islamic fundamentalism was supposed to be on the wane. Five years ago the best scholars of the phenomenon were writing books with titles like "The Failure of Political Islam." Observers pointed to the exhaustion of the Iranian revolution, the ebbing of support for radical groups from Algeria to Egypt to Saudi Arabia. And yet one sees political Islam on the march across the Middle East today. Were we all wrong? Has Islamic fundamentalism gotten a second wind?

-snip-
This coming to terms with democracy, however, should not be mistaken for a coming to terms with Western values such as liberalism, tolerance and freedom. The program that most of these groups espouse is deeply illiberal, involving the reversal of women's rights, second-class citizenship for minorities and confrontation with the West and Israel. The most dramatic example of these trends is in southern Iraq, where Shiite religious parties rule without any checks. Reports abound that civil servants and professors are subjected to religious and political tests, women are placed under strictures never before enforced in Iraq, and all kinds of harmless entertainment are being silenced by vigilantes. When entering the office of Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, one now sees women swaddled in veils and gloves, a level of zeal rarely seen elsewhere in the Muslim world.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11182278/site/newsweek/

4 page article.

[Joe Chi Minh]

1. Surely, you have to believe in government at home, never mind,

abroad, before you can believe in democracy anywhere ("Stay right where you are, Kenneth Blackwell"). As for democracy abroad, "Come back Mr Allende! All is forgiven!

[FloridaPat]

2. The world is changing and The People are realizing they can run

their own lives. This puts governments and religions in a position where they must give up their power and therefore their riches. They want things to go back the way they were. The People want peace, health for all, food for all, education for all,and ethics and morality for all. This is a way between The People and the "leaders". The fundamentalists from both big relegions are fighting their own last gasp.

[Virginia Dare]

3. Name one thing he's done that hasn't....EOM

[MakeItSo]

4. Exit polls by widely respected groups showed Fatah winning!

Why is it that exit polls based on the science of statistical analysis were once used to VERIFY election integrity, but all of a sudden they don't seem to work, either in the US in 2004 or in the Occupied Territories in 2006? What if the hard-right Likuddists fixed THIS election to give a majority of seats to Hammas, thereby removing any obligation by Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians?

[Syncronaut Seven]

5. Anybody who believes that * ever intended to "spread democracy"

Is dangerously naive. Haven't the facts in evidence put that lie to rest yet? Amazing.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

6. What a stupid ass question. n/t

[0007]

16. ditto

[warrior1]

7. he's not the President

[MissWaverly]

8. What a bitter harvest for the Neocons

I feel this is largely a result of their idiocy.

[Neil Lisst]

9. Bush's whole plan is IDIOCY!!

The notion that democracy would make the mideastern Islamic countries MORE pro-US, not less, is yet another example of why you don't let a clueless, ignorant man run the government.

If the silly bastard knew anything about the mideast at all, he'd know that the average person is much more hostile to the US than is their government. That is true of every single country, whether Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, UAE, Yemen, or any of these others.

[holdyourbreath]

10. nothing new here. (not trying to be snide)

unless bush resigns, we're doomed. Period.

[sandrakae]

11. To spread democracy, you have to know what it is.

Since he thinks our Constitution is just a fucking piece of paper, that tells me he doesn't know what democracy is. The only thing he has been spreading is hate.

[Vidar]

12. Bush's understanding of democracy is authoritarian capitalist cesspool.

[laugle]

13. He only made it the centerpiece after no WMD's were found.

Let's not forget the original BIG LIE!!

He had to buy time so that the war profiteers could make a killing, and to save face on the planet since he ended up looking like the pea brain he is......

[Disturbed]

14. Spreading Democracy is doing the Lord's work.

LOL

Anybody even remotely fmailiar with the bible would know that the Lord was a jealous, vengeful, egomaniacal Dictator. Hmmm... sort of like The Silverspoon Scoiopath.

[bklyncowgirl]

15. Does anything that Bush touches NOT turn into a fiasco?

Let's look at a few examples:

The Iraq war.
Hurricane Katrina
Prescription drug plan
Social Security Reform
Rendition and torture as official US policy
The Federal budget deficit
The trade Deficit
The pending environmental disaster