If you think what is going on in the ME is anything more than Islamist religious BS

[sharesunited]

then I think you are sadly mistaken.

Religionists are at the core of what is going on and you are going to be just left holding your genitalia if you speak kindly of them.

They are NOT democratic.

[Desertrose]

1. Completely & totally disagree. nt

[Ken Burch]

2. That's clearly not what's happened in Tunisia

The revolution there was led by secular, leftist-looking people.

And in Egypt the size of the Muslim Brotherhood is artificially large due to the fact that Mubarak has always banned all secular opposition parties.

You're not going to argue that we should hope the existing ugliness stays in power, I hope.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Gravel Democrat]

22. If someone quotes incorrect literacy figures

are they illiterate?

Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 71.4%
male: 83%
female: 59.4% (2005 est.)

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/eg.html

[derby378]

4. In perspective, look what happened in Russia

The Czar wasn't overthrown by Lenin directly - he was overthrown by a revolutionary known as Alexander Kerensky, who wanted to establish a democratic republic in Russia. Unfortunately, Kerensky's provisional government was too weak to withstand a coup by the Bolsheviks, and that's how Lenin wound up in charge.

If Tunisia's revolutionaries are able to establish a strong democratic government, more power to them. As things stand, religious extremists like the Wahabists and al-Qaeda would love to take advantage of any political instability in any Arab nation and claw their way to the top. Remember that the fundamentalists who now control Iran had to brush aside a few political opponents of their own, including Communists (re: Persepolis).

[karynnj]

40. Maybe the way to look at those cases is to quickly recognize

any fledgling democracy and to give them the support we gave Egypt under Mubarak.

[Laelth]

5. Disagree. n/t

-Laelth

[melody]

6. I'm afraid I agree n/t

[whoneedstickets]

7. Even if the impetus is from a non-islamic group, the movements will be co-opted.

I think you're right. Once the Autocrats are out the Ayatollahs will be in.

[Recursion]

32. If Egypt were shi'ite, perhaps

You'll find very few ayatollahs in Egypt.

[Ozymanithrax]

8. Why should that make a difference...

They have the right to create a government of their choosing. If it is religious, so be it. If they raise up new tyrants, then it is their choice. Self determination doesn't require them to create democracy. We should support their right to self determination.

[melody]

10. If it ends with nuclear war, you're in favor of them raising up new tyrants?

A solidly fundamentalist middle east and a potentially nuclear-powered Iran doesn't terrify you?

[Ozymanithrax]

11. So our dictators good, but their chosen dictators are bad...

And, how will this lead to nuclear war?

Israel, Pakistan, and India have Nuclear weapons in the region and somehow refrained from using them in any of their wars. However did they resist that urge to destroy themselves?
Syria made a serious attempt and Iran appears to be trying.

But in what way does changing governments, or tyrants, whatever you want to call it, cause a nuclear war.

It is a curious fact that Iran has not started a war since the 17th century. What makes you think they are suicidal to the point of starting a nuclear war that will lead to their extinction as a Nation?

Even Korea, the craziest nuclear power on earth, hasn't nuked its neighbor, because crazy though the leader is, suicidal he isn't.

A solidly fundamentalist Iran doesn't frighten me. Fundamentalist isn't the same as suicidal.

[melody]

12. Why would young men give up their lives by flying planes into buildings?

We're quickly becoming a non-entity. We're in no position to fight anyone.

They killed 3000 innocent people. You really think those "idealistic" fundamentalists wouldn't try to destroy civilization, if the worst people took control?
They see virgins in paradise awaiting them.

The US, for all our international bullying (with Europe), has kept a lid on a lot of these maniacs. We're not in a position to do that anymore. Your idealism
is useless if we all end up dead.

[Ozymanithrax]

13. A few suicidal people manipulated by a non-suicidal leader...

is not a country. The leaders of Iran have shown themselves not to be suicidal. Iran did not kill 3000 innocent people. In fact most of the 2 billion Muslims in the world did not kill 3000 innocent people.

Now if you add to that that, other than Russia, China, and some European countries, nobody in middle east or elsewhere has a long range missile system to deliver nuclear weapons to us, for which they would be utterly destroyed. Should they try, we have all the assets we need to utterly destroy any nation in the region. A nuclear strike doesn't require an invasion force.

If these people want to try and free themselves, then we should support them rather than insist they live under the foot our our picked dictators.

Freedom is dangerous. We should all live dangerously.

[melody]

14. You seem very secure in your opinion of their leaders but think little of ours

Those young people who followed bin Laden (the ones still alive) are now ten years older and in leadership positions.

Would you honestly have no problem with rural Alabama having nukes? That is what we're talking about here. Ignorant fundamentalists with nukes.

Young idealists who think they will live forever always have very black and white views about "freedom." We're not all evil and they aren't all "good."
There is a lot of gray in this situation. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, come hell or high water, is a highly irresponsible act. If something
awful is unleashed, will you still be so optimistic?

I'm a middle-aged atheist and pragmatist. I don't believe in anything beyond this life. I'd rather act cautiously and slowly than get behind a violent revolution in
a region that is a powder keg.

[Ozymanithrax]

23. You seem very secure in your opinion of our foreign policy...

and even quicker to come to unfounded assumptions.

Those people who followed Bin Laden, and are still alive, are not suicidal. The Suicidal ones they send out to die. Suicidal people become guidance systems for bombs, not administrators. Those that survive, work to maintain the power structure and create a modern Caliphate. Somehow, you've made the entirely unsubstantiated conclusion that Al Qaeda is such a powerful force that they will take over every one of these countries, should they fall. If there were an omniscient god, of which I see no proof, an omniscient god could look into the minds of these people in these movements and use gods invisible hand to rewrite their thoughts. We human beings are much more limited in what we can see. I think allowing these people to determine the nature of their government is the best of many course, none of which we can see with any clarity.

Perhaps, it would have been better had the British acted more forcefully to stop our founding fathers from seeking to determine their own destiny after writing, "In the course of human events..." After all, the country that created nuclear weapons and used them in war grew out of what could be viewed by some as a serious British mistake.

We should not pursue a modern American version of the old British "White Man's Burden" to see that these benighted and lesser people in these other nations must be guided by well meaning tyrants as if they were poor ignorant children susceptible to manipulation by mysterious forces.

Alabama does have nukes, held in trust by the U.S. Government. Should Alabama wish to secede from the union, I would advocate that Nuclear weapons held by the current government of the United States be removed before that state be allowed to pursue its own destiny. Actually, this is ridiculous comparison, as any series of incidents that led to secession of Alabama, would remove any concerns of the middle east from our minds. We would be involved in an open civil war.

I'm a middle aged agnostic pragmatist, willing to let people in other nations determine their own fates rather than attempt to stomp their throats with our rather worn Imperial boot, for their own good of course. Let them seek out freedom as they conceive it.

[melody]

27. You're making very rash assumptions based on little evidence

Believe me, I hope you're right ... I fear you are not.

[Ozymanithrax]

29. Other men had other things to say abot such events.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...

I support their right to try and make something better without our interferance.

[golfguru]

60. Are you saying people in Iran are free?

Can an Iranian change to Christianity and build a church in Teheran?

[Fire1]

42. Ditto! n/t

[Hippo_Tron]

47. Iran has enough conventional weaponry to do serious damage, if they were suicidal

Yet somehow those crazy fundamentalists have managed to not unleash their entirety of their forces on any of the Sunni nations or Israel for that matter. The logical conclusion is that these guys enjoy being in power, just like every other ruler in the history of the world, and they are not interested in being destroyed in the inevitable retaliation. Crossing the nuclear threshold doesn't change this equation. Iran won't have the power to blow up the world just because they can develop a crude nuclear bomb. They will simply have the power to do significant damage, which they can already do.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want Iran to get a nuclear bomb and I don't want Egypt to be overtaken by the Muslim Brotherhood. But I'm not shitting my pants over the possibility that suicidal crazy people will get the bomb.

[cleanhippie]

55. FEAR - FEAR - FEAR - FEAR!!!!

[chimpymustgo]

61. No. It will help counterbalance the crazies in Amerikkka and Israel.

[leftynyc]

15. Nobody is saying

they don't have the right. I'm leary of what comes next. If it's a theocracy, women, gays and minorities will, once again, get screwed. And I have every right to bitch about that.

[Ozymanithrax]

26. Rudyard Kippling's "White Man's Burden" pretty much followed that idea.

White man's Burden

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke (1) your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel, (2)
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

It was repugnant then, too.

[leftynyc]

30. So, you're okay with ignoring

this kind of crap?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4714184


Good to know. You call it white man's burden. I call it being human. Whatever.

[boppers]

9. Israel is Islamist?

Not democratic, either, of course, but "ME" is a huge bloc.

[leftynyc]

16. How are they not democratic?

They have elections where every citizen gets to vote. Do you think votes are being manipulated?

[boppers]

17. I think that defining some people as citizens, and others as not citizens, is undemocratic.

Does every person under their military control get a vote?

Do people in Gaza, and the West Bank, get a vote? Do refugee families in Jordan (etc.) get a vote?

It is my understanding that a democracy means that everybody in the control of the state gets a vote.

Of course, declaring people as "not citizens" is a time honored tradition to deny votes, be they blacks, women, or Jews (or any other group).

[leftynyc]

20. Really? I wasn't aware that the Irish

get to vote for Prime Minister of Great Britain. Learn something new every day.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

21. Technically, there is no "Prime Minister of Great Britain".

Or rather, there is, but that's not his job description.

The Northern Irish are ruled by the same government as the rest of the United Kingdom, headed by a prime minister, for whom they get to vote, just as the people of Great Britain do.

The "Southern Irish" (actually, Ireland is divided into Northern Ireland and Ireland, confusingly...) do not get to vote in elections for the government of the United Kingdom, because they are not ruled by the government of the United Kingdom.

[Recursion]

33. Ireland is not part of the UK

You know, "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".

Everyone living in Northern Ireland is a Crown subject and gets to vote for parliament.

Everyone living in the Republic of Ireland has their own country; why should they be able to vote for another country's government?

[boppers]

41. Ireland has a military blockade around it?

Uhm, no.

[Ignis]

59. "Learn something new every day." That would be great. Please try harder.

Why on earth would the citizens of the Republic of Ireland vote in UK elections?
And do you really think that the UK PM is elected through direct democracy?

Wow.

[Hippo_Tron]

48. The people of Afghanistan don't get to vote in US elections

Does that mean we are not a democracy?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

50. No, but it means that if you try to make your control of Afghanistan permanent you wouldn't be.

Intervening in another countries affairs temporarily with the goal of setting up a democratic state is legitimate for a democracy; doing so permanently or on the scale of multiple decades is not.

[rug]

18. It has nothing to do with class, economy or authoritarian governments.

It's nothing more than religion.

Talk about living in an imaginary world.

[lunatica]

19. violent uprisings against governments are not democratic by definition

They're usually against governments that are corrupt and violent towards their own people. The people don't get to have a say in what goes on so their only path is to overthrow their governments violently. their leadership is what becomes the government if they succeed. Remembering the overthrow of the Shah of Iran by the followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini is a good history lesson.

Look to who leads the uprising, even if in exile if you want to see what is going to replace the government being taken out.

[Enrique]

24. it's economic

It was sparked by a guy who lit himself on fire because he was economically desperate. Masses of poor who are having a hard time affording food, and their corrupt governments living in luxury. It makes people really angry. Islamists have exploited that in some cases, of course, but the root is economic.

[flpoljunkie]

25. Reportedly the Muslim Brotherhood was late to the Egyptian protests. They just joined in today.

[sharesunited]

44. Were they involved in the assassination of Anwar Sadat thirty years ago?

Look again at your timeline.

[quiller4]

57. Not nearly as involved as the CIA and some segments of the Egyptian military

Leaders of the Brotherhood condemned the assassination at the time. The CIA rather conveniently tried to blame the assassination on the Brotherhood--something Sadat's widow has denounced loudly.

[Leithan]

28. Always nice to hear from an aipacker

:thumbsdown:

[Jennicut]

31. If people from all backgrounds and the young middle class is involved then it

is simply all religious. Whatever. Seems more about economics and a govt. that represses it's people that anything else.

[Recursion]

34. So are you deliberately ignoring that the muslim brotherhood was hands-off until today....

...or do you just not know that?

[ljm2002]

35. Well, then, that would certainly explain why...

...Christians protected Muslims as they prayed this morning, before the protests swung into full gear.

Yep, must be part of the religious Islamist conspiracy...

[jeanpalmer]

36. So what

Black religious leaders were at the core of the civil rights movement. Were they religious bs?

[treestar]

37. Do we know this?

The protests seem to be grass roots.

But it is reasonable to be concerned with what might replace the current regime.

[tekisui]

38. Boogey boogey boo! Be afraid,

Be very afraid!

And, remember to support the dictators!

[karynnj]

39. Do you know that?

I know that I do not know. What I do know is that El Baradei is not a " religionist" - whatever that is. Do you know this is the same thing the right is saying.

I listened to Obama's and Clinton's statement and read John Kerry's. All of them are saying the same thing - and NONE of them are doing anything other than calling for peaceful protests and calling for a peaceful response. ALL three called for opening up the phone and internet services. (The latter now appears to have happened.)

I think whole heartedly backing a dictator, who is responding by calling the army and police out against the crowd, would be a disaster - and against our interests.

As to your call that it is "religionists", have you ever been to Egypt? Do you know any Egyptians?

[JVS]

43. Que sera sera.

[ClassWarrior]

45. Wasn't the loaded word "Islamist" coined by the Bush** Misadministration?

Just sayin'.

:shrug:

NGU.

[sharesunited]

46. And Eisenhower seems to have coined "military industrial complex."

If it rings true, I'll take it into my own vernacular.

[joshcryer]

53. Islamism is to Islam as Catholicism is to Christianity.

[bhikkhu]

49. unrec'd for stupidity. n/t

[BlueMTexpat]

51. Your biased headline reflects your ignorance about what is

actually happening in Egypt right now. But you do spout the Faux line quite well. Nice try.

I tried to unrec but was timed out.

[Codeine]

52. I don't agree with you often,

but when you're right, you're right.

[quiller4]

58. But now is nnot one of those times.

[Name removed]

54. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[quiller4]

56. Disagree completely. That is part of the lie Mubarak has been

telling the West for 30+ years. Just because it is so frequently repeated does not make it true.

All of the Western-educated Egyptians oppose Mubarak and believe the longer he clings to power, the stronger extremists in the opposition become.

There is still a window where a care-taker regime could be formed to lay groundwork for a free and fair election. If such an election were held in the next six months, estimates say the Muslim Brotherhood would garner suppport from 20% of the voters.

[chimpymustgo]

62. Racist much?