How we denied democracy to the ME - By Robert Fisk

[Gloria]

http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en45815&F_catID=&f_type=source

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.

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[Leovigild]

1. Denied Democracy ?

So America created the political culture of the Arab world ?

The first step to a democratic political culture is full religious tolerance. You can't get to democracy if that isn't in place first. If you're not willing to tolerate different religious views you won't be willing to tolerate different political views.

In Saudi Arabia it is a crime to possess a Bible or wear a cross or build a Christian church. There are people in Saudi prisons for doing these things. In Egypt they are imprisoning Coptic Christian women who were formerly Muslims because it is a crime to convert FROM Islam. You are perfectly free to convert TO Islam but it is a crime to convert FROM Islam. The only Muslim country where Christians are safe is Lebanon and that is because they have the firepower to protect themselves. They are marginally safer in fascist states like Baathist Syria and Saddam's Iraq where the minority Alawis who rule Syria and the minority Sunni Iraqis recruited Christians as allies.

[laura888]

4. so how do christians fair in eastern mongolia?

...and malaysia and southern argentina and ethiopia and korea?

why this fascination with how christians fair in islamic countries?

let's also look at how difficult it is to be muslim in the U.S. today. where muslims are afraid to go to mosques because people lump them together with all terrorists.

christians who help create this climate of fear should question whether they are truly loving christians.

[Leovigild]

5. We weren't talking about eastern Mongolia

The subject here is the Arab world and whether America somehow "denied democracy" to it. So don't try to turn things around.

It is not physically dangerous to be a Muslim in America. It is VERY physically dangerous to be a Christian in practically any Muslim country. And we won't even get into Sudan or Pakistan where Christian girls are enslaved or get acid thrown in their faces. Or Nigeria where 13 Christian churches were burned to the ground last week.

So trying to turn it around with finger pointing just won't work. Whether you wish to handle the truth or not, it stands on it's own and it is truly horrifying.

Fisk is babbling about how America "denied democracy" to Arabs. That is nonsense because you can't have a democratic political culture of tolerance of differing views and the rule of law if you don't even have religious tolerance first. Jihad and Jefferson don't mix.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

8. excuse me but MANY of Saddams cabinet members were Christians..Iraq

was a diverse religious country and had relegious toloarnce, in bagdad alone there were 350,000 Christians and many churches...Tariq Aziz was a catholic!...why do you think Osama hated Saddam?

[Leovigild]

10. But that's the point

Tolerance in the Arab world must be forcibly imposed from above. It does not come from below. It is not popular. The moment the bonds of coercion are loosened, Sunni jehadis are bombing Shiite shrines.

You can't have a political culture of democracy without tolerance. So this Fisk article is whiny nonsense.

And Sunnis were only about a third of the Iraqi population. Christians are 10%. Sell Christian Iraqis on the notion that a democratic Iraq would be a Shiite Islamicist state and they will align with fascism simply to protect themselves.

[laura888]

2. why do we have to read Fisk in foreign media?

isn't he one of America's shining stars in journalism?

Why isn't something like this published in American news publications, dammit!?

[bpilgrim]

3. he's a 'brit'

thank gore he 'invented' the internet ;->

peace

[DUreader]

6. kick

[ElsewheresDaughter]

7. best book i've read in awhile "All The Shahs Men" by Stephen Kinzer......

An American coup and the roots of middle east terror...This is a short and very readable account of the American sponsored coup that overthrew the Iranian government of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. I recommend this book for a variety of reasons. First, it briefly summarizes Iranian history in a way that readers without a lot of background can absorb. Secondly, Kinzer tells the story of the coup without loading the reader down with so much detail that the essentials of the story are obscured. Thirdly, while Kinzer clearly blames the British, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and the Eisenhower Administration for making a short-sighted decision. As an aside, Harry Truman comes off looking very wise in resisting pressure from Britain to support the coup; a decision the Eisenhower Administration reversed.

This book is A MUST READ for anybody like me that wants to know more of the background to todays political climate. The sections on the ancient history of Persia are particularly fascinating and told in a quick, clear way.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

9. kick