How we denied democracy to the Middle East

[DuctapeFatwa]

We created this place, weaned the grotesque dictators. And we expect the Arabs to trust Bush's promise?

It gets weirder and weirder. As his helicopters are falling out of the sky over Iraq, President Bush tells us things are getting even better. The more we succeed, he says, the deadlier the attacks will become. Thank God the Americans now have a few - a very few - brave journalists, like Maureen Dowd, to explain what is happening.

The worse things are, the better they get. Iraq's wartime information minister, "Comical Ali", had nothing on this; he claimed the Americans weren't in Baghdad when we could see their tanks. Bush claims he's going to introduce democracy in the Middle East when his soldiers are facing more than resistance in Iraq. They are facing an insurrection. So let's take a look at the latest lies. "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe," he told us on Thursday. "Because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." Well said, Sir. George Bush Jr sounds almost as convincing as, well, Tony Blair. It's all a lie. "We" - the West, Europe, America - never "excused and accommodated" lack of freedom. We endorsed lack of freedom. We created it in the Middle East and supported it.

When Colonel Ghaddafi took over Libya, the Foreign Office thought him a much sprightlier figure than King Idriss. We supported the Egyptian generals (aka Gamal Abdul Nasser) when they originally kicked out King Farouk. We - the Brits - created the Hashemite Kingdom in Jordan. We - the Brits - put a Hashemite King on the throne of Iraq. And when the Baath party took over from the monarchy in Baghdad, the CIA obligingly handed Saddam's mates the names of all senior communist party members so they could be liquidated.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5177.htm

[RuB]

1. I could agree with the premise and have even accused the U.S.

of the same crimes Robert Fisk does in this article re: our pathetic support of murderous dictators like Saddam and the like in the Middle East, Pakistan and those countries, but where does he or anyone get the notion the U.S. has any right to "control" Israel?

"the failure of the Bush administration to control Israel"

Israel is a soverign nation. The United States doesn't control Egypt. Yemen. Or any other of the middle eastern countries we give aid to, why would anyone presume they could or even should 'control' Israel?

Shouldn't this post be in the I/P forum?

[DuctapeFatwa]

2. He is talking about US policy vis a vis the region. Israel is not a nation

it is a US weapons dump, and that is US policy.

The "I/P conflict" is just one, albeit a stellar one, of the many results of US policy in the region as a whole.

[JackSwift]

3. Maureen Dowd is hardly a brave journalist

she is a lying and vituperative hack columnist who, as far as I know, doesn't leave Connecticut, New York and its environs.