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Egyptian protester being taken away by plainclothes security personnel
© 2005 Joshua Stacher (Source: Human Rights Watch) |
“U.S. officials insisted this week that the [Egyptian presidential] elections represented progress and, despite imperfections, fit into the Bush administration’s goals for advancing democracy,” reported Megan Stack of the Los Angeles Times, hours after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was declared victorious in the country’s first multi-candidate presidential elections ever.
A great deal of truth can be deduced from the above assertion: Egypt’s elections of September 9 were a sideshow for a botched American foreign policy in the Middle East, culminated with the utter failure of subduing Iraq militarily, thus molding its political structure to represent—as we were promised—a “pinnacle of democracy” in the Arab world.
There is little need to once again scrutinize the long list of now aborted war pretenses listed by the Bush administration to justify its deadly invasion and continued occupation of Iraq.
Former top US weapons inspector David Kay in his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, in January 2004, was one of the first who possessed enough courage to admit that “we were all wrong,” that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
| Mubarak is beyond criticism because US interests find him a suitable ally. |
But Kay’s audacity ended right there, since the adversarial role of scrutinizing and questioning would naturally be left to the supposedly liberal media—but no such investigation ever actualized; few questioned the lies, deliberate lies that have cost Iraq up to 100,000 victims and counting, and have cost the “greatest democracy in the world” its honor and whatever shred of respect the Bush crowd inadvertently reserved.
It was no secret that “democratizing” the Arabs is part of the same scheme of pretenses that attempted to justify and rationalize America’s military presence in the region. “If we abandon Iraq,” we are told, “the democracy project shall falter.” And since the American public is as ever impartial in any efforts to export democracy to undemocratic countries, then why not let the democracy charade do what the WMD sham couldn’t?
It is no wonder why US officials were almost trembling with excitement over the great democracy project underway in Egypt. The interesting, albeit odd part in this is that only 23 percent of the 33 million registered Egyptian voters turned out for the vote. Even that relatively meager turnout was marred by accusations of “widespread” violations, intimidation, and promises of food in exchange for a vote in favor of the incumbent. Considering all of this, one can hardly find a reason to celebrate Mubarak’s new term in office, six more years to be added to another quarter of a century, plagued with indescribable poverty, official corruption, and political suppression.
But Mubarak is beyond criticism because US interests find him a suitable ally; so what if over a million Egyptians dwell in a graveyard adjacent to Cairo? And so what if Islamist and secular dissidents are rounded by the hundreds in mass arrest campaigns? Who can hear their cries anyway, not to mention the cries of human rights groups demanding their release or the recognition of their most fundamental rights? As long as the Egyptian government is fulfilling the “regional role,” to which it was entrusted, then both the US government and its media have no other option but celebrate Egypt’s “rising democracy.”
US-managed democracy substantiates the hands-on approach of American foreign policy; it is designed to validate and excuse the sins of its ever well-intended allies and to repudiate those of its foes.
Take for example US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s highly publicized tour in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe earlier this year. While Rice’s rhetoric was as ever predictable, it artfully illustrates my point.
| Who can possibly contest that Iran, despite all its blunders, has taken more steps toward democracy than Egypt has? |
Expectedly, she verbally reprimanded and threatened Syria and Iran for not fully and unconditionally embracing democratic reforms, while expressing “encouragement” regarding the Palestinian, Iraqi, and Lebanese endeavor for democracy following the supposed democratic elections in those countries.
Once again, US regional allies—those who unreservedly cater to American interests, be they economic, military, or simply “strategic”—are either entirely immune to criticism or, if criticism is inevitable, their most horrific crimes are curtailed to barely warrant a few mild words of censure.
On the other hand, the failings of America’s foes are augmented, embellished, and often fabricated outright to necessitate diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, and war—as a “last resort.” While the occupation of Iraq is carried out in part to serve the end of that logic, Iran’s current political attitude toward aggressive US policies in the region is qualifying it for the important, although ominous role of being the Middle East’s most formidable bogeyman which, in one way or another, must be taken down.
This logic, simply put, is absurd. While there is no doubt that both Egypt and Iran are violators of human rights, who can possibly contest that Iran, despite all its blunders, has taken more steps toward democracy than Egypt has? This is not to deny that Iran’s democracy will never be complete without an open and intimidation-free electoral system to impede the state’s meddling regarding who is qualified and who is not to run for parliament or for office, what party agenda is acceptable and what is not, and so forth. Nonetheless, civil society in Iran, for instance, despite its many hindrances, is vastly more advanced than that in Egypt.
Yet, while Iran receives disproportionately higher criticism than any other country, Bush’s trustees continue to reiterate that President Mubarak “had unlocked the door for change.”
This is, of course, another “encouraging” sign according to the Bush administration’s newly forged doctrine on how to manage the Middle East. But Washington’s new style manual fails to take into account two noteworthy scenarios, one being the prediction made by the United Nations-sponsored Arab Human Rights Development Report of 2004. The report adamantly forewarned that “power will be transformed through armed violence” if Arab states don’t adopt serious political reforms and significantly raise the margin of freedom in their societies. Secondly, a genuine democracy will most likely bring to power the repressed anti-US forces dotting the Arab world. After all, pro-democracy opposition groups in Egypt refused to meet with Rice during her recent visit to the country.
“We are against the US policies in the region and we cannot have any negotiations with them, and all the opposition parties in the country agree on what I'm saying,” Georges Isaac, a co-founder of the Egyptian Movement for Change, known as Kefaya (Enough), told Arab News. “If we want political reform to be implemented in the country, we want to do it ourselves, not to be imposed or to be even discussed with Rice.”
| “If we want political reform ... in the country, we want to do it ourselves, not to be imposed or to be even discussed with Rice.” |
Washington’s undeclared new dogma professes a new Middle East policy that works toward avoiding complete political meltdown, chaos, and violence throughout the Arab world—evidently very harmful considering the United States’ disastrous debacle in Iraq—while trying to maintain first-class rapport with friendly regimes. Managed democracy, again, becomes the new stratagem.
Managed democracy is as superficial as it is cosmetic, but it can work miracles, or so Washington believes. Not that such democracy is a new phenomenon or that its subjects are necessarily junta-run Third World countries. But nothing shall amount to the formidable task awaiting the US government in managing democracy in the Middle East.
Washington seems to be counting on the fact that Arab peoples are so desperately fed up with their governments that they are willing to forge alliances with anyone to get rid of their oppressive and degenerate regimes. That would perhaps be true if the United States’ democracy manual was indeed interested in more than dusting the tainted images of its own allies, who, like Mubarak, shall reign as long as they skillfully and faithfully play their part. (Saddam Hussein’s shift of allegiances and challenge to the designated role earned him a damp, lonely cell with US soldiers filming him naked for a laugh and a few bucks.)
Moreover, Washington is obviously failing to grasp the fact that, in the eyes of the Arab masses, the impiety of the regimes can hardly be separated from Washington’s own regional designs that compelled a decades-long sinful matrimony between oppressive rulers and equally domineering American foreign policy.
One can confidently argue that managed democracy will falter the way the rest of American pretenses have. Nothing less than a full, unconditional withdrawal from Iraq and a genuine departure from the utterly unbalanced policy toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would rekindle the Arabs’ faith in Washington or any other entity that claims to be interested in upholding the Arab peoples’ unequivocal demands for political rights, human rights, and civil liberties. Yet one has to wonder how deep the United States’ honor and reputation will sink before the Bush administration accepts this simple, albeit unavoidable logic.
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