I’m relieved Big Pharaoh – the blogosphere’s man in Cairo – doesn’t appear as worried as I thought he would be about the sudden announcement by Hosni Mubarak of democratic elections in Egypt. Recently the BP opined that he didn’t think his country was ready for full bore democracy and preferred to wait for a civil society to develop. Well, history has a way of pulling us along with it. Now the Big Pharaoh writes he may even vote for Mubarak. I guess it’s a case of “the devil you know.” We’re all familiar with that. But speaking of “devil” clichés, we all know it’s supposed to be in the details.
UDPATE: Also from the Big Pharaoh, a group of Lebanese has pulled down the statue of the late Syrian dictator Hafez Assad in Lebanon. Maybe they’ll put up one of Bashar, though I doubt it. Am I only one or has anyone else thought that the opthalmologist/wannabe dictator is a particularly spidery and repellent version of Michael Corleone, taking over the family business? Or better yet, maybe he’s Fredo.
I don’t believe that Mubarak has changed.
I think he is laying two simultaneous bets:
1) If I appear to be liberalizing, my popularity will increase to the extent that I will be elected anyway.
2) Once re-elected, my term will outlast Bush’s, and the next US president will not be so danged insistent on democratic reform.
Mubarak loses if he loses the first election, or if subsequent administrations stick to the Bush doctrine. He wins only if he wins the next election and the US goes soft.
It’s a risky strategy, but it’s his best hope. Autocrats are on the defensive.
Roger I just read a review of the movies up for Oscars. I have seen part of Million Dollar Baby and most of Sideways.
The writer believes that Mystic River was a much better movie than this year’s Clint movie.
She thinks neither it nor Sideways are phenomenal movies but that with the buzz with wanting to crown Clint’s royalty that Million Dollar Baby will win, but that Sideways should win.
Let me say that I remembered Paul Giamatti from Howard Stern’s movie, he played a critical and extremely tortured/funny character… received little recognition and was very good in it – as well in this movie.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/lifestyle/sfl-27oscarsfeb27,0,5008678.story?coll=sfla-features-headlines
Morgan, I agree with what you’ve said.
This has a strong element of “camel’s nose” to it, though. We’ve seen (Ukraine) how the rest of it works.
There’s also the matter of how it appears outside Egypt. Via LGF, Scylla & Charybdis. We’ve got a rising tempo of rising expectations. We’ve seen it before in Eastern Europe. Once it starts going, it can move very quickly.
When I heard the announcement about Mubarak, my first thought was, “I wonder what Big Pharaoh thinks of this?” Definitely a sign that I’m overblogged.
These developments are potentially pretty stunning. The Iraqi election still seems to be having some mighty powerful aftershocks around the Middle East.
I think things are changing. Needless to say however, time will tell.
But there will be a lot of stumbling and back peddling along the way so in regards to Egypt we can not expect too much too soon.
Based on my very limited understanding of Egyptian politics, if I were unfortunate enough to live there I might join Big Pharaoh and vote for Mubarak. Isn’t the largest single opposition group in Egypt the Islamic Brotherhood?
This is a good example of cases where democracy might not be an instant, universal panacea. In Egypt and elsewhere, the patient might need a little additional treatment before applying that particular cure.
Big Pharaoh’s initial hesitation, followed by his cautious embrace of the idea of democracy reminds me of a similar journey a co-worker of mine took.
When the company hired this gentleman, I had a few political discussions with him. He was from the Ukraine, and was one of the few people I’d met who actually grew up behind the Iron Curtain. I was very curious about his views on life then, and now (he emigrated in the late 90s to the US). One thing that amazed me was his insistence that a free Ukraine was a crazy idea, the analogy he used was ‘it was like West Virginia seceding by itself from the US’. He expected the Ukraine and Russia to rejoin in the near future, and that this was the natural order of things, even though Ukraine’s relationship with Russia hasn’t been historically advantageous to the Ukrainians.
Fast forward a year, and the Orange Revolution hits. I noticed he was glued to the proceedings, reading Ukrainian websites and the like. I asked him if he still felt that the Ukraine was an integral part of Russia. He had changed his mind, he now supported Ukrainian independence. Indeed, he was reveling in it.
To make a long comment even longer, I’d suggest that Big Pharaoh and my friend both shared a common fear of the unknown with regards to democracy. In autocratic tradition, the rulers like to promulgate the view that they rule because they know best. The ruled feel they need to be ruled. It’s when they start to believe that the People might know what’s best that you start getting the snowball effect.
Interesting parallel, Bill S. Reminds me of a similar story from the former Soviet Union.
For some years, I was involved with a young woman from the Republic of Georgia who got out of the country literally days before the Soviet Union collapsed. In their first democratic elections, the Georgians elected Gamsekhurdia–a young, charismatic dissident who just about destroyed the country. He achieved power democratically, but he literally had no concept of what it meant to govern democratically. Shevardnadze stepped in and ruled Georgia in a corrupt, autocratic manner, but he kept it together and dealt fairly shrewdly with Russian attempts to dominate the “near abroad.” Even though my friend initially supported Gamsekhurdia, she felt Shevardnadze was better than G. or the other alternatives.
My friend was thrilled by last year’s Rose Revolution, but Georgia in 2004 was a very different place from Georgia in 1992. Sometimes a strongman isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a country. And I honestly don’t know how relevant this is to the situation in Egypt.
utron:
Your point about the oppposition party being the Islamic Brotherhood is well taken. My relative ignorance means that I’m not sure whether that is correct or not, but, that aside, it emphasizes the point that what really needs to happen is for the people to accept the idea that they have the right to change the leaders as a matter of course, and that whatever leaders they choose have powers that are bounded.
If a free people put theocrats in charge, those theocrats have limited power to enforce their views, and they can be removed at a later date, I say that’s a win for freedom and democracy. If they have the ability to override any bounds on their power, and therefore the people have no way to replace them, that’s failure.
In the long run, people have the same goals the world over, and those goals (by and large) do not include killing one another. If Egyptians are free to choose their leaders, I have no doubt that they will want those leaders to concentrate on improving their lot – not on supporting terrorism, creating a worldwide Caliphate, or squashing Israel.
ìThe Iraqi election still seems to be having some mighty powerful aftershocks around the Middle East.î
Why would one expect a different result? The dominoes will continue to fall. Instapundit has linked to this interesting piece concerning Syria:
ìJack Kelly wrote earlier that the Iraq War has already been essentially won, with nothing much left than the cleanup. This constitutes a major part of that effort, and as long as the pressure remains on the Syrians, more cleanup will follow after this. It also confirms that Syria indeed had a hand in fomenting the terrorist attacks in Iraq; now, with this revelation and the apparent reversal of course by an extremely nervous Assad, we may see the entire Zarqawi/Ba’athist effort collapse in on itself within weeks.î
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/003941.php
Iím convinced that the Bush administration threatened the Syrians with violence. Assad and his fellow Baathists are worried about themselves. The hell with their comrades in Iraq. Self preservation is the first rule of the jungle.
Roger:
How fast the middle east changes and how rough some of the inevitable growing pains of democracy will be at least change has started. Of course when things dip south President Bush will be blamed and of course any triumphs will be attributed to anyone but Bush there is no question that change has begun.When Reagan combined unabashed calls for freedom combined with a muscular defense policy the captains of conventional wisdom called him an idiot for trying to destroy the status qou of the Soviet empire and then when the wall and the USSR collapsed they started jumping thru hoops to give anyone but Reagan credit. If , in the year 2000, anyone who would have told these pompous windbags that you would have elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and soon in Eygpt,and you would have Syria discussing pulling out of Lebanon, they would have asked for your drug dealer and if they could get a discount. I am no pollyanna, there will be massive struggles and no doubt some serious setbacks, but change in the ME has at least started and you cannot look at the process rationally and say that Bush does not deserves credit for getting the process moving.
The left all over the world has been moaning about the tragic lack of human rights in the ME but they would never do anything except hold seminars, throw the occasional candlelight vigil, and write sonerous op-eds. The UN became a vanguard of saftey for those governments who wanted to keep things as they stood, and this corrupt center of inaction cynically blamed the US for supporting these assorted tyrants.
Carter talked about human rights but would not fight for it and instead tried to use the UN when that group quashed any attempt at change.President Bush has made some huge mistakes but at least he is trying. During the civil war Lincoln was being pressured to replace Grant because of the massive casualty counts and rumpours of drinking. I don’t have the exact qoute but Lincoln suggested giving whatever Grant was drinking to his other lazy generals because at least Grant fought. Much of the left is in favor of change but only if no one dies and everthing goes smoothly without any problems. I would like this too but I live in the real world and I know that this utopian dream is impossible to achieve. The left dicusses democracy in the ME but does nothing , Bush is trying to implement it.
I realize there might be someone like the Islamists who win some elctions, but then they have to deliver.
It is one thing to rant and rave about martyrdom when there is no alternative and no one is accountable, but once it becomes plain that blowing people up and terrorizing women are the only things these guys can do chances are the romance will be over.
Now this is really interesting . . . seems US is planning Arabic language tv broadcasts to Eurpoe later this year.
What do you all think?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1896&ncid=1896&e=1&u=/nm/20050227/us_nm/security_usa_muslims_dc
Lola
I think it is another tool for the USA to use in the spread of Freedom. It seems a good idea to me to use Satellite TV to, for instance, broadcast successful Democratic Elections with a positive spin, something these viewers may not be seeing. Propaganda? I don’t think so, but I am sure the Left will decry this as such.
Lola,
That’s the best news I’ve heard this week.
Of course its 2 years too late. The US should have had blueprints for this drawn up before Iraq or Afghanistan.
How about a Spanish speaking satellite station as well. Fox News is going to start kicking a** in Canada soon, already in Australia and Britain, or is Sky there?
This is an Information ‘propaganda’ age. The US and especially Israel has been losing it to the Despots in the Middle East and to the far left especially in Europe for decades now.
And any information is propaganda, not necessarily in a bad way. A point of view is a point of view. When you try and deny you have one and preen yourself as ‘unbiased’, like the BBC, CBC as worst case examples and CBS, NBC and ABC to a lesser extent is what is pure propaganda.
Mike