How Must the West Guide the New Middle East?
Two enormous appetites have suddenly arrived at the Middle East’s table: democracy and consumerism. Ravished from years of famine and abuse, the people revolted and opened the doors to the well-stocked pantry and kitchen. Yet despite having overthrown tyrants, they are not now unruled. Two strict overseers are watching: Islamists and the military. Crowded with tribes, Sunnis and Shiites, and colonialist operators who function like combinations of parasites and predators, the well-laden table is still a game of who gets full plates and who survives.
Revolutions taking place in countries that have been ruled by dictators and exploited by foreigners are breathtaking in the possibilities that they offer. But they can, like so many others before, become hideous monsters of abuse and destruction.
Americans and Europeans have dined at this table for years, supplying abundant feasts for tyrants who served their interests. A mild rebuke here and there, but the weapons kept pouring in; good for business was the polite mannered morality that determined the menu.
And now, having watched this partying from the window, the youngsters have come in for their share. A demographic necessity, they want education, decent jobs, freedom to express themselves, gender equality, and all the other things they see on TV. Their weapons are small: communication devices they hold in their hands, videos and computers, promising that dreams come true.
The question: where will this banquet go? Islamists have no interest in giving up power, and less interest in Western culture. Generally lacking wider education, Islamists don’t read (excepting Islamic texts) and are totalistic in thinking. Pluralism, variety, and openness are threats. Using a spiritual façade, their interest is political: control the world through shariah and a caliphate.
Military leaders, experts in giving and taking orders, are aware of the advantages of the technological advances. Secular, they like parades with modern weapons, fancy uniforms, and international connections. They are not medieval sheiks with harems, and their children, if not military types, want university educations, businesses, and fat bank accounts.
The modern Middle East table, because it has been transformed by a young generation of appetites, holds the promise of enlightenment, progress, new relationships, and hopefully peace. Having tasted freedom, they want more; with flat wallets, they want the money that was hidden in foreign bank accounts. They want a piece of the pie, at least.
This new enthusiasm for what the world offers is a hopeful sign. The question is whether it can be translated into institution-building, stable economies, employment, and a higher standard of living. They can be seduced by Al-Jazeera and politicians who speak their language, but a new spice has been added to the main course: a sense of empowerment and responsibility.
This presents a unique opportunity for America and Europe to serve their message on a silver platter: democracy works for people. We are ready to help build that new society. Islamists will try to trip up the servers and undermine programs that threaten their views. But they can’t compete with what the West can offer, if done carefully and correctly.
The West cannot compete with the radical Islamist imams, mullahs, and other anti Western, anti Christian, and anti Jewish Moslem religious leaders in the Islamic Arab world.
These radical Islamists live, work, eat, and sleep among their followers, they speak the same language, they use the same metaphors, and if they need to, they spread the same lies and fantasies.
The Westerners with their lives among the Moslem Arab elite, usually English speakers working in their professions and living in urban areas and have no conception of the fellahin and their families miserable and barely livable lives.
That is why the radical Islamist’s will always win and why they always have won.
we are here, see us. we arn’t all radical muslms, we want freedom, and building secular society.
“No more snacks and finger food; they want a place at the table: a constitution, an independent judiciary, and separation of religion and state — for starters.”
If you keep in mind the overwhelming percentage of those protesting are males under 30, most citizens have not protested, and major polling in nations like Egypt a few years ago had most wanting an Islamic structured or Sharia-like governance, I think you may be presuming the appeal for Western principles.
I wonder if these folks had employment, abundant food on the table and money in their pockets… would they want to kick the leadership out?
I hope it does work for the best and the likes of Al-Jazeera, Muslim Brotherhood etc. will not win out in the end. I hope the West is smart and not give them opportunity to exploit. But we need to stay real, an Islamic foundation may be perceived as the only answer to guarantee a liberty acceptable, even to the majority of those protesting. There is the longing for freedom, lets not have any illusions as to what that may mean.
” Islamists have no interest in giving up power, and less interest in Western culture. Generally lacking wider education, Islamists don’t read (excepting Islamic texts) and are totalistic in thinking. Pluralism, variety, and openness are threats. Using a spiritual façade, their interest is political: control the world through shariah and a caliphate.”
Exactly. Oh, and where did that young Google executive go in Egypt, you know, the one that was certain that real democracy would come to that country after he helped overthrow Mubarak? You know the guy, the one that was trumpeted by the main stream media here, that skinny young kid who was just so sure that the Muslim Brotherhood would never take over Egypt. Where did he go? Ya don’t hear much about him anymore, do you. And you won’t. He was the useful idiot that the Islamists used to help overthrow Mubarak. Now, like most useful idiots, they are thrown under the bus after the revolution is over. Nice going, champ. You got rid of one dictator and you’re letting a worse one in, the same way the people of Iran did in 1979. The Muslim Brotherhood will take over Egypt within eight months and there isn’t a thing all those little jerks with cell phones and blackberries and I-pods and home computers with SOME Internet access can do about it.
Rather than turning to the Internet for their answers, they should be cracking open a book about the Communist revolution of 1917 and reading up on that, because that is what’s in store for Egypt by the beginning of next year. Remember, Russia also had a civil war before the Communists finally took over. No reason why something like that can’t happen again in Egypt, with the Muslim Brotherhood on one side and the Army on the other. Notice I said the “Army.” You can forget about any form of republic or parliamentary democracy taking hold in Egypt. The best you can now hope for is yet another military dictatorship with the Army maintaining control over the country. Always remember, when starting a revolution that an AK-47 is a lot more powerful than a cell phone.
I agree with the premises of this article; the era of rhetoric in the Middle East – a rhetoric that is divorced from the realities of demographic pressure and economic realit – is over.
The reality is that the populations of the ME have exponentially increased in the last 4 decades – beyond the carrying capacity of a statist single-resource based economy. Simply put: oil cannot maintain the population. To maintain that size population, a capitalist or middle class economy is required.
A middle class economy is not statist, i.e., a civil service paid by the state’s oil revenues. It is private enterprise; small to medium businesses. This middle class economy has been deliberately repressed in the ME but – as I noted – the statist oil redistribution economy can’t support this size of a population.
Fundamentalism of any type – Islamist or dictatorial – is a parasitic economy. Islamism is economically parasitic; it has no capacity to develop an economy; it has no economic productive capacity. In the West, the radical Islamists are parasitic on the already existent industrial economies – and, most are funded either by ‘state funds’ (as ‘religious or multicultural sets’)..or by Saudi oil.
My point is that Islamism has no economic productive ability. Since it rejects the inidividual freedom – it can’t enable a middle class economy – and the ME can’t last any longer without the introduction and rapid development of such an economy.
The era of information networking has shown the ordinary people – not the elite Rulers – what can be done by the ordinary man in the real world. And, as noted, the single-resource based economies of the ME, have reached their economic limits to support the massive population increases. Islamism has no economic capacities and can only operate as a parasite on an economy that can support their non-productive behavior.
So – this means that, in my view, fraught with difficulties as it is – a capitalist middle class private enterprise economy and constitutional democracy are inevitable in the ME.
How studid you must believe us to be to try and pass this our direction! They want a place at the table and “gender equality”…really? Wasn’t there just a poll showing the upwards of 90% support female genital mutilation? That’s why the Arab elites lust after Western women because they’ve never seen a clitoris. The ONLY idea that can separate the real freedom from bogus talks about coming democracy is the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment shames those countries based on Islamic law like Pakistan and Afganistan which are removing all other religions from their population by force. Article 1, Section 2 allowing us to vote on the tax man every 2 years gives us power as people that they will never have with a corrupt parliamentary tribla society. Screw them if they can’t adopt a proven document! Let them flounder along again. With a 5,000 year history of kings and tyrants I don’t know why anybody would think they can be creative this time.
A proven document, just how long is US history exactly – a flash in the pan by all measures of successful government. Is it the constitution that made the US successful, or just the war booty of a native american’s holocaust?
US wealth is a bigger joke, biggest debtor nation and to who? Chinese, Japanese and ARABS. A man who takes a big fat loan is not wealthy.
The US has no moral or economic superiority, it just has the biggest guns. At this rate we might get to see just how short lived such a basis of a nation really is.
Why don’t we just stop trying to run the rest of the world by remote control? We conservatives complain about our government trying to control American citizens’ lives. Why don’t we complain about our government trying to control everyone else’s lives?
Foreign or domestic, people live by exactly the same principle: they are happiest and most prosperous when they’re most free. They are not necessarily friendliest and most cooperative. Sometimes they’re actually dangerous. But treating them like anything other than grownups is not only demeaning for them, it puts US in the position of acting as their parents throughout a never-ending difficult adolescence. Do we really need the f**king Saudis, Tunisians, Libyans, Afghans, Iraqis, etc., etc., figuratively living in our basement forever and ever? I say it’s time for them to go out in the world and fend for themselves.
Exactly.
Dream on.
I’ll bet you think the “Palestinians” will leave you alone if you just give them “their” land, too.
There’s no idiot like a useful idiot.
“How Must The West Guide the Middle East?”
A more reasonable question would be: “Why would anyone think that Islamists would accept “guidance” from Infidels?” The Arab world, after 1400 years under the burden of Islam, has not been able to establish a democracy; why would any one think it could do so now?
The truth is that Muslims don’t give a damn about what the West thinks, and instead of condescendingly asking how we can “guide” them, we should be asking what we can do to protect and ADVANCE our own interests in the face of the Islamic aggression that is sure to come.
["Two enormous appetites have suddenly arrived at the Middle East’s table: democracy and consumerism."]
Hmmmm! From the three traditionally defined [forms] of democracy have risen….oh, I don’t know, maybe a dozen or so more contrived forms of democracy representation.
What precisely, are folks and the U.S. Government speaking to, when they ‘throw’ around the term and demand for “democracy” in other sovereign nations around the world? The original constitutional form of democracy in the U.S. or the current [corrupted] form of democracy in the U.S. today?
Does our constitution grant or give mandate to U.S. citizens and the government to dictate and or manipulate what form(s) of government other sovereign nations of the world should have? I think not!
“Consumerism”? Last time I checked our constitution, our federal government was granted ‘regulation’ of foreign commerce. How does that translate into the U.S. government intervening into a soverign nations conflict of internal consumerism?
Had the U.S. not ignored our constitution, concentrating more on taking care of our own internal problems and far less dictating mandates for other sovereign nations internal problems…..we just might not be where we are today….not to mention the hundreds of thousands of lives and billions (trillions) of dollars in national assets lost to such nonsense.
A few thousand years of history tells the reasonably intelligent ‘rock’ that man (societies and governments) lives in constant conflict, so its pretty arrogant (moronic) to believe that the U.S. or the UN is going to reverse those thousands of years of history and laws of human nature.
Maybe we should consider for a change, the idea of staying at home and taking care of our own business and defending against enemies that declare war against our people on our homeland. We have more than plenty of problems within, to take care of, including a corrupted democracy and a continuing socialist revolution!
How many new democracies do you think will appear in the middle east in the next year? I’m guessing none. I’m sure that each country will dress itself in some trappings of democracy; tailored to each particular country’s special feature. Egypt will continue to be run by a military government, perhaps with some plating of democracy. Bahrain will continue to be Bahrain but with more nice words and perhaps a couple more Jews apointed to ceremonial posts. And so on for Yemen, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia etc. Presumably in Libya, the current crazy dictator will be replaced by another sane dictator.
Ironically, the million to one chance of even a half-assed democracy emerging is Iran, where people have suffered the Muslim theocracy for years and are sick of it.
The only example in modern times of a nation “changing Heart” and becoming a functioning democracy is Japan where it took 7 years of occupation and an Allied Powers mandated constitution to do it. If we are not ready to do that again, we lose.
In Iraq, where we had the ability to do so we folded. For that reason, I am pessimistic about the outcomes in North Africa, Bahrain, Yemen, et. al.
Dr. Shalit
We need to help when asked. No money only guideance since we are officially BROKE. As long as Islam so benefits the male population there is no reason to expect any alternative to take root. The Muslim women are slaves and will remain nothing more than convenient breeders for centuries. I can’t imagine watching my sister be stoned because her husband accused her of infidelity….But this is how they intimidate & control the females.