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February 2, 2011Arabs want and need democracy
WELL, well. See those three planes that just took off from Cairo airport to fly foreigners to safety?
Let this news report describe it:
"Iraq decided it would evacuate its citizens, sending three planes to Egypt -- including the Prime Minister's plane -- to bring home for free those who wish to return."
About 800 Iraqis took up the offer, proving George W. Bush was right and his furious critics were wrong.
That Iraqis consider their own country safer than Egypt is not only a sign that liberating Iraq has succeeded.
It also suggests the US president was right when he declared that Muslims of the Middle East not only deserved democracy but could handle it.
See Iraq today, under freely elected leaders. See now protesting Egyptians demanding the same for themselves.
It was after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that president Bush declared America was threatened most by countries that were not free.
This "Bush doctrine" was his theoretical justification for toppling the Taliban tyranny in Afghanistan in 2001 and Saddam Hussein's genocidal dictatorship in Iraq in 2003.
Bush did not just want to destroy al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan, or programs for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
He also wanted to turn both countries into democracies, reckoning enemies would then become allies who'd share the most fundamental values of the US.
As he said in November 2003: "Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter?"
You may think that the success -- so far -- in Iraq gives us the answer. But in the past few weeks we've also seen a Tunisian despot chased out by mobs demanding democracy there, too.
That largely peaceful revolt has in turn helped to inspire huge protests in Egypt, as well as demonstrations in Algeria, Jordan, Sudan, Oman, Mauritania, Morocco and Yemen.
But if you thought freedom was no more than what justice demands and Arabs deserve, recall how the Left mocked the very idea when put by Bush.
Recall Rory Steele, a former ambassador to Iraq, who in 2004 was one of 43 "eminent Australians" to sign a joint letter damning the Howard government for freeing Iraq.
Sneered Steele: "The invaders did this in the name of democracy, a concept unaccepted to date in the Arab world and one that is totally unrealistic for Iraq."
Really? Tell that to the Iraqi parliament, Rory, or the protesters in Cairo, Alexandria, Tunis and Sanaa.
Leftist lion Phillip Adams, the ABC guru, likewise thought Bush's notion of spreading democracy from Iraq to other Muslim nations was "lunatic" and a "load of ideological claptrap".
Age writer Ken Davidson, the veteran Leftist, also couldn't believe mere Arabs could handle democracy. Saddam might be "a monster", he argued, but "arguably . . . Iraq can only be held together by a monster".
Such thinking was not restricted to just a few scribblers, deranged by Bush hatred. There's even an echo of it in the foreign policies since pushed by Barack Obama and by Kevin Rudd, both as prime minister and Foreign Minister.
Obama dropped all that Bush-style tough talk about bringing freedom to the Middle East. He instead tried to show Muslim leaders he was no threat to Islam -- and to their regimes.
Rather than upset them by mentioning they'd denied democracy to their explosively resentful citizens, he flattered them by criticising new Jewish settlements in Israel.
RUDD followed Obama's example to the letter. When he met Mubarak last December, he said nothing about the elections the President had just stolen or the freedoms he'd crushed. Instead, he, too, attacked Israel's settlements and even demanded it open its nuclear sites to international inspection.
And even until yesterday, he refused to criticise Mubarak personally or to demand free elections.
There's a price to pay for siding with a dictator against his people, especially when the dictator is finished -- and Obama is now scrabbling to make good.
On Sunday he called for "an orderly transition to a government that is responsive to the aspirations of the Egyptian people", a day after France, Germany and England issued far more aggressive demands, including "a broad-based government and . . . free and fair elections".
But too late. Egyptian democrats now accuse Obama of selling them out.
Raged Mohamed ElBaradei, the most prominent opposition leader: "You are losing credibility by the day. On one hand you're talking about democracy, rule of law and human rights, and on the other hand you're lending still your support to a dictator who continues to oppress his people."
I don't pretend the choice between Mubarak and the mob was easy, since change in Egypt may well end in tears.
In 1979 there was a revolution in Iran by people crying "freedom", too, and all it produced was an Islamic fascist regime. An election in the Palestinian Authority gave power to Hamas.
There are also great risks in siding with protesters against a government that's a key ally in a dangerous neighbourhood, especially when that government might hang on.
But now that Mubarak appears to be sidelined by his armed forces, the US -- and Australia -- seem on the wrong side of history, and, more shamefully, on the wrong side of the fight for freedom.
I doubt that Bush would have made that mistake.
He understood what those who demonised him dismissed: that freedom is indeed a universal value, and that Arabs want and deserve it, too.
And he knew our own security demands they get it, and make it work.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion-old/arabs-want-and-need-democracy/story-e6frfifx-1225998306016
