Red Alert: Democracy NOT breaking out all over the Mid-East/Muslim Countries

[boutons]

With no WMD nor any threat to the USA found after the invasion, the Repub revisionists have been saying the REAL REASON (so real, and unsupportable by the US public, that it had to obscured to the point of hiding it) for invading Iraq was to install democracy (which took over 100 years to become mature and stable in the USA), which would have a "domino effect" (hawkish desk jockeys who never fought in a war just love domino effects, eg, the key rationale for the VN war) of causing democracy to break out in neighboring countries.

Well, the "democracy breaking out" was always a 1-in-a-million bullshit toss, as was "slam dunk" victory, "greeted with open arms", etc.

As the Repugs move to install themselves as a one-party power which they will never relinquish voluntarily, they expect the ME rulers to give up power voluntarily for the sake of democracy. Not even the US-ally Egyptian ruler, the spoiler below, will do that, never mind the more corrupt regimes.

Every power shift will require violent overthrow, country by country, from the bottom (and/or perhaps from the murdersous USA), continuing the regional instabilty (and, surprise surpise, high oil prices for the oilcos) for years.

=====================

washingtonpost.com

U.S. Goals Are Thwarted At Pro-Democracy Forum
Demand by Egypt Derails Middle East Initiative

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 13, 2005; A24

MANAMA, Bahrain, Nov. 12 -- An international conference intended to advance democracy in the Middle East ended Saturday without a formal declaration, eliciting expressions of disappointment from U.S. officials, who considered the conference a key part of President Bush's regional democracy initiative.

In a surprise move, Egypt, which accounts for more than half the Arab world's population and is the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid, derailed the Forum for the Future by demanding language that would have given Arab governments significant control over which pro-democracy groups would receive aid from a new fund.

Last-ditch diplomacy by the United States -- which was represented at the conference by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- failed to get Egypt to budge, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit left before the conference broke up. "We made a very clear case," a senior U.S. official at the conference said on condition of anonymity. "There were intensive negotiations. We made clear it would scuttle the declaration"

Participants may have to wait another year for a region-wide declaration, Bahrain's foreign minister, Khalid bin Ahmed Khalifa, said at a news conference here.

The gathering of dozens of nations -- including 22 Arab countries, members of the G-8 industrialized countries and others -- nevertheless agreed to set up two new groups to promote political and economic reform.

The U.S. delegation expressed disappointment with Egypt, a long-standing ally on such pivotal issues as the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Bush administration's international fight against terrorism. Egypt receives roughly $2 billion in U.S. military and economic assistance annually. Since it made peace with Israel more than a quarter-century ago, it has received tens of billions of dollars from the United States.

"Obviously, we're not pleased," said a second senior State Department official attending the event.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian democracy activist who attended the conference, charged that the government of President Hosni Mubarak was holding the region "hostage to its despotism. By so doing," he said, "they leave the field clear for the theocrats. . . . The theocrats still have the mosque," a reference to the fact that Egypt's proposed restriction would have limited funds available to secular democracy activists and nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs.

The Forum for the Future, a joint U.S.-European initiative launched at the 2004 G-8 summit hosted by Bush at Sea Island, Ga., is an element of the administration's Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative. With the related issue of Iraq, promoting democracy in the Islamic world is the Bush administration's top foreign policy priority. The first Forum for the Future was held last year in Morocco; this year's forum was aimed at fostering nongovernmental organizations and civil society.

The forum's final declaration would have bound countries in the Middle East and North Africa to "expand democratic practices, to enlarge participation in political and public life, to foster the roles of civil society, including NGOs, and to widen women's participation in the political, economic, social, cultural and education fields and to reinforce their rights and status in society while understanding that each country is unique."

But Egyptian officials wanted to add language stipulating that only NGOs legally registered with their governments were covered by the declaration. Although Saudi Arabia and Oman initially supported Egypt, all the governments but Egypt agreed in the end to take out language that would have given them control over foreign resources going to groups in their countries. The United States told the Egyptian delegation that the addition was inappropriate, U.S. officials said.

"In our view and in the view of other delegations, this would have circumscribed NGO activity," said the second senior U.S. official, who briefed reporters traveling with Rice.

The aid most affected by the wording of the declaration would come from one of the two new funds established Saturday, the Foundation for the Future. The foundation has commitments of over $50 million to help nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions and professional associations foster freedom and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. The United States has pledged $35 million.

The second new fund, called the Fund for the Future, is designed to help small and medium-size enterprises to stimulate the private sector and attract foreign investment. The fund, which is expected to establish offices in Egypt and Morocco to evaluate and recommend investments, will contain about $100 million, with the Bush administration pledging $50 million.

The dispute over the forum's final declaration underscored broader differences between the West and Muslim nations of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.

Several Arab delegates expressed concern that the norms of democracy -- and the means of achieving it -- were being imposed by the outside world. At a dinner Friday night before Rice arrived, several delegations made clear that the Arabs want more say in crafting criteria for change, according to Arab and European officials present.

Britain, which co-sponsored the forum with Bahrain, acknowledged the issue at the news conference. "It would be a disaster for the region if this region thought democracy was an American idea," said British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

In her opening remarks at the conference, Rice voiced criticism of Syria and demanded it release all its political prisoners -- specifically a democracy activist, Kamal Labwani, who was arrested Tuesday after he returned from talks at the White House.

"We continue to support the Syrian people's aspirations for liberty, democracy and justice under the rule of law," Rice said, as Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Charaa looked on.

"We would like to see an end to the arbitrary detentions of democratic and human rights activists," Rice said.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Red alert, you're still a spiteful, ignorant, hateful little cunt.

[Vashner]

No one said it was instant or free..

Are you now saying DNC talking points include "we don't want democracy in Middle East?

Make up your fucking mind.. for or against democracy.. because shit like this just proves you want to be pre WWII isolationists.

[exstatic]

Once again, democracy cannot be GIVEN to someone, they have to create it themselves. So far, the Iraqis have some up snakeyes on that one. Seeing that something is doomed to fail is NOT the same thing as wanting it to fail. That government is going to fall within a month of when our last planeload of troops leave, and yes, even if that's five or ten or twenty years down the road. The only question is, how long do we stay and how many dead do we absorb.

We've managed to pull off the impossible: forging an alliance between the remnants of the Baathists and their former mortal enemies, the Islamic extremists. I don't buy the whole "Islamic chaos state like Afghanistan" if we leave argument. Those factions will turn on each other the minute we leave and be entangled for years with no winner. I'd rather see them blowing each other up than blowing up our troops.

[ChumpDumper]

No problem. We can invade Egypt too.

[exstatic]

^^^^Yes, those koo koo democratic Egyptians. :rolleyes

[Dos]

I wonder why were still patroling the DMZ in between south and north korea... some 50 years after the korean war....? Lets not forget more recently kosovo.. hey why the hell does the UN still have troops all over africa and some parts of the middle east.. lol

[boutons]

"still patroling the DMZ in between south and north korea"

bureaucratic inertia of the Pentagon,
Korea is an "interesting, see-the-world" completely safe posting

fear that pulling out will dishonor those who died there (shrub logic)

NK is a dangerous, insanely dysfunctional "country" that, afaik, is still formally at war.

To face up to PRC.

To maintain a Pacific presence.

What's your point, Dos?

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

fear that pulling out will dishonor those who died there (shrub logic)

So what kind of logic was it when Clinton decided the same?

Question.

[exstatic]

Or Reagan? Or Nixon?

Question.

[CharlieMac]

In two years the US can't bring stability to a region that has been unstable for thousands of years? Shocking.

[boutons]

AHF, thank you for demonstrating, repeatedly, that nearly all of you right wingers/red-staters simply can't compose a cogent response to a message, and ALWAYS resort to attacking the messenger. Rovian reflex. Keep it up, you self-indicting, dickless twit.

[gtownspur]

Or Reagan? Or Nixon?

Question.

I don't know, the burden is on you. We're not bitching about Reagan or Nixon.

As far as all clinton defenders go, I got this to say.

Monica didn't swallow, why do the Democrats have to?

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

AHF, thank you for demonstrating, repeatedly, that nearly all of you right wingers/red-staters simply can't compose a cogent response to a message,

Cogent response? This coming from a person who posts shit like...

"Fuck Shrub, fucking dickhead shrub and his fucking dickhead pussy policies."

:lmao Look in the mirror you human vagina.

And again:


Quote:



fear that pulling out will dishonor those who died there (shrub logic)



So what kind of logic was it when Clinton decided the same?

Question.

Still waiting, cunt.

[boutons]

AHF, my trash talkin is in the context of other text and supporting articles. Your trash is just dickless trash.

Shrub started a bogus war based on lies for Repub partisan objectives, and then said we have to keep wasting US lives in Iraq to honor the US lives already wasted in Iraq, making himself a risible object, yet again, of widespread ridicule.

Clinton didn't start any bullshit wars, so didn't have to "shrub logic" any war.

[boutons]

...

[boutons]

When Iraq is a briilliant beacon of Arab democracy in the ME, here's another reason why that light won't cut through the darkness in the neighboring countries.

btw, the mukhabarat sorta sounds like the FBI/CIA empowered greatly under the Patriot Act. You know, where once a US citizen gets one of these 30,000/year "National security letters", he can tell no one, EVER, what it says. If you squeal, you could win a secret, extended, all-expenses-paid vacation to secret Club Fed Romania (So sorry about including only a one-way ticket. We didn't have enough money after we gave a $1T in tax cuts to rich+corps).

The entire "secondary" reason for the Iraq war, "bringing democracy to Iraq", is now seen to be ignorant, myopic, foolhardy in the extreme.

"Rumsfeld's own advisory think tank, the Defense Science Board, took a long look at this issue last year and concluded that the architects of the Iraq war -- led by Rumsfeld -- lacked necessary knowledge of Iraq and its people, and that they failed to factor in well-known lessons of history."


"bring democray to Iraq" sounds like "good intentions", but "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". And hell is what the Repub war in Iraq is.

btw, Jordan in the article below, long-time US ally in the ME, obviously does not represent the kind of free and democratic country the US public would go to war for to establish freedom. But Iraq is many years, if ever, removed from being even Jordanian-style country. Iraq's "democracy" won't budge even US-friendly dictators in Jordan and Egypt from dictatorship into US style democracy.

So let's see, where are we, "why the US invaded Iraq":

1. Saddam WMD: bullshit
2. Saddam involved in 9/11: bullshit
3. Saddam immediate threat to continental USA: bullshit
. : bullshit
. : bullshit
. : bullshit
N. bring democracy to Iraq and thereby all of ME: bullshit

==============================

The New York Times
November 14, 2005

Stirrings in the Desert

Heavy Hand of the Secret Police Impeding Reform in Arab World
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

AMMAN, Jordan, Nov. 13 - At a cultural festival last year, Sameer al-Qudah recited a poem of his depicting Arab rulers as a notch below pirates and highwaymen on the scale of honorable professions. Within days, Jordan's intelligence police summoned him.

Mr. Qudah, sentenced to a year in jail for a similar offense in 1996, was apprehensive but not surprised. The secret police, or mukhabarat in Arabic, is one of the most powerful and ubiquitous forces in the Arab world. Jordan's network had surreptitiously videotaped his reading.

"We are hungry for freedoms like the right to express ourselves," said Mr. Qudah, 35, whose day job is supervising construction projects as a civil engineer. "But our country lives under the fist of the mukhabarat."

In Jordan and across the region, those seeking democratic reform say the central role of each country's secret police force, with its stealthy, octopuslike reach, is one of the biggest impediments. In the decades since World War II, as military leaders and monarchs smothered democratic life, the security agencies have become a law unto themselves.

Last week's terror attacks in Amman accentuate one reason that even some Jordanians who consider themselves reformers justify the secret police's blanket presence - the fear that violence can spill across the border. But others argue that the mukhabarat would be more effective if it narrowed its scope to its original mandate of ensuring security.

"The department has become so big that its ability to concentrate is diluted," said Labib Kamhawi, a businessman active in human rights. "The fact that the intelligence is involved in almost everything on the political and economic level, as well as security, might have loosened its grip on security."

In Jordan, one of the region's most liberal countries, the intelligence agencies vet the appointment of every university professor, ambassador and important editor. The mukhabarat eavesdrops with the help of evidently thousands of Jordanians on its payroll, similar to the informant networks in the Soviet bloc.

The secret police chiefs live above the law. The last head of the Jordanian mukhabarat routinely overruled the smoking ban on Royal Jordanian Airways, lighting up as he pleased. No one dared challenge him.

The State Department's annual human rights report, unusually critical of a staunch ally, particularly one that offers widespread cooperation on terrorism issues, said the lack of accountability within the mukhabarat and the police resulted "in a climate of impunity" and underscored "significant restrictions on freedom of speech, press, assembly and association." It said the agents "sometimes abuse detainees physically and verbally" and "allegedly also use torture."

Although the Bush administration has cited the need for democratic change in the Middle East as a reason for going to war in Iraq, the threat of instability on Jordan's border may actually be restricting democratic freedoms there.

Even with the bombings in Amman as the latest reminder of the threats to Jordan's security, many activists deem progress impossible unless the influence of the mukhabarat is curbed.

"The issue of security has become a nightmare," Mr. Kamhawi said, contending that Jordan had failed to find the balance between democracy and security. "If you give a speech against the policy of the government, this is a threat to security. If you demonstrate against this or that, it is a threat to security. It hits on all aspects of life and it is a severe hindrance to any change."

Getting a senior mukhabarat officer to speak to a journalist is extremely rare. The Jordanian mukhabarat made the head of its domestic affairs branch available for this article on condition that he not be identified, but what he said offered meager insight into the agency's inner workings.

"There is no freedom like that in Jordan," he said with enthusiasm in Arabic. "You are a free man in a free country."

However, Mahmoud A. al-Kharabsheh, a maverick member of Parliament who joined the mukhabarat in 1974 and retired as its head in 1991, spoke candidly. The mukhabarat, he said, runs Jordan's politics.

"Some Parliament members allow the mukhabarat to intervene in how they vote because they depend on them for help in getting re-elected," he said. "They enter into 90 percent of the political decisions in this country."

Keeping Watch

Omnipresent secret police exist in every Arab country. Indeed, mukhabarat (pronounced moo-kah-bah-RAHT) is among the first Arabic words expatriates learn, particularly reporters.

This reporter's experience in Egypt is telling:

Once in late 2001, I was loitering outside the Cairo headquarters of the secret police, an unfamiliar building, and was detained. My Egyptian assistant and I were ushered into the office of a polite major, whose walls were hung with roughly 10 diplomas from the F.B.I., including one for interrogation.

"Is this an interrogation?" I asked.

"No, it's just tea," the major responded, grinning.

After a brief, friendly conversation about my impressions of Egypt, we were released.

But in the years since, whenever I was involved in any reporting in Egypt that state security considered dubious, the major would call to inquire.

In Jordan, interviews over three weeks recently with dozens of people - including members of Parliament, former ministers, journalists, professional association leaders and businessmen - turned up tales of frequent encounters with the secret police.

Muhammad Atiyeh, 51 , described two encounters, the first after he undertook the seemingly innocuous task of trying to set up an organization of single parents. The group was denied a license, he said, then the Ministry of the Interior's security arm rejected him as president for seven months.

The organization "had nothing to do with politics, and yet they interfered," said Mr. Atiyeh, who thinks Jordanian citizens should have a right to know what their secret police files contain. "I have never done anything against the society or the government or the regime, so I am still waiting for someone to explain why."

In another incident, Mr. Atiyeh and a few friends, in a puckish mood on a winter weekend in 2004, decided to decorate a stretch of exterior wall at his house with graffiti.

One man wrote a line from the Constitution stating that that personal freedom is protected. Another wrote, "Love is immeasurable." A third scrawled, "Life comes first." Mr. Atiyeh himself wrote an Arab proverb about the absence of choice.

Three days later, the phone rang. The secret police summoned him and ultimately ordered him to paint over the graffiti because it might be "misinterpreted."

In a recent poll by the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, more than 80 percent of the respondents said they feared criticizing the government publicly. More than three quarters said they feared taking part in any political activity.

Jordan has never been a police state on the gory scale of neighbors like Iraq, and it is not surprising to find Jordanians who feel they can speak openly about political issues. But for most Jordanians, the mukhabarat remains a source of fear. Some Jordanians avoid uttering the word, whispering "the friends" instead.

Maj. Gen. Rouhi Hikmet Rasheed, a 33-year army veteran and former top military dentist, ran for Parliament in 2003 on a platform calling for a constitutional monarchy. His campaign drew the attention of the head of the mukhabarat, Maj. Gen. Saad Kheir, who warned him to stop, Dr. Rasheed said.

"He told me that if I meant we should have a monarch like Britain's, this is not in the best interests of the country," Dr. Rasheed, 62, now a Parliament member, recalled. He was shocked by what came next: "He said, 'You are a son of the regime, we trust you, but if your sons want to work in Jordan in the future, it might affect them.' "

General Kheir declined a written request for an interview, and the senior mukhabarat official interviewed for this article said he was unaware of such a call.

Poetry and Politics

Mr. Qudah, the poet, said the secret police summoned him for the first time in high school. His offense was helping to lead a 1988 protest against the death of Khalil al-Wazir, a Palestinian guerrilla leader assassinated by Israeli commandos in Tunis.

But he notes that there are far worse places in the region than Jordan. "It's not that we are better than the countries around us," he said. "We are just less bad."

Mr. Qudah was born in 1970 in Ajloun, about 30 miles north of the capital, into a sprawling east Jordanian tribal clan. The oldest of nine children, he remembers his first poem was an ode to the snow falling on the local reservoir that fed the surrounding orchards of apples, figs and olives.

Mr. Qudah's political education started in grade school, when he was particularly engaged by the history lessons surrounding the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, the British-French pact that divided the Arab world into separate countries and laid the groundwork for a Jewish homeland.

He said he eventually absorbed every history book in the school library, and grew up yearning for a pan-Arab state. Unlike many native Jordanians, Mr. Qudah takes no issue with Palestinian refugees settling here permanently.

Expressing topical ideas through poetry is an Arab tradition. Criticism of Jordan's stagnant political situation always brings an enthusiastic crowd response, Mr. Qudah notes. "It is like music, you are making a speech but in a musical way."

It also brings another kind of attention. As an undergraduate, he said, the mukhabarat questioned him 20 times after poetry recitals critical of the government.

Still, he notes, "you cannot form a political party by reciting poetry," something he would like to do to push for bigger, specific demands, like appointing the prime minister from among elected members of Parliament, rather than by the king.

Political parties were banned here for decades. Most are legal again, but are either religious or promote failed ideologies like Baathism, a vision of a secular Arab renaissance hijacked by the likes of Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad.

The personal costs of any serious organizing effort hobbles reformers, Mr. Qudah and others said.

"If you work in the daylight you might be imprisoned for a year or two, but you can still come back and work," Mr. Qudah said about overt political organizing. "But to work in the daylight you have to be very persuasive, serious, honest, and you can't quit as soon as the government offers temptations, so you compromise."

Today, the drab headquarters of six major professional associations are the hub of Jordan's unofficial opposition, a role the government has sought to curb by writing a draft law that bans their political activity. The proposed law was heavily criticized by Human Rights Watch as a step backward for democratic change. For the moment, the building is still a host of endless political seminars. On a recent night, the minister of political development showed up to discuss reform. Participants mocked his ministry as an absurd example of the top-down attempts to change the system that are doomed for lack of public participation.

Still, Mr. Qudah says he wants to change the reality that most Arabs have no say in how their countries are run. Nor can such reforms be held hostage by the likely deranged types who carry out terrorist attacks like those here last week, he believes. Good security is a separate issue.

"Why does this part of the world lack any kind of democratic practices?" he asked. "To respect your own intelligence means you cannot accept the way things are, you cannot live with the official lie that all is well in the Arab world."

An Expanding Influence

Reformers believe that King Abdullah II is ambivalent about political openness.

On his frequent visits to the United States, the king asserts he wants Jordan to become a constitutional monarchy. Yet at home, he decreed intolerable any public discussion about returning to the 1952 constitution, with its more extensive checks on royal power.

The king, the reformers note, was educated partly in the West and inculcated to a degree with democratic values. But he was thrust onto the throne unexpectedly - King Hussein designated him the heir just two weeks before he died in 1999 - so the 43-year-old king relishes the chance to rule alone, they believe.

Reformers say they are disappointed that he has not enacted more tangible changes. They often place blame for this lack of change on the mukhabarat's influence, which has expanded since the 1990's, with the death of King Hussein and Jordan's peace treaty with Israel.

While peace diminished the need for the military, the mukhabarat expanded its role to monitor widespread opposition to the agreement. After the king died, the mukhabarat helped provide stability and support while the young heir found his feet.

Many reformers, including some members of Parliament, believe a crucial reason the legislative branch of government remains so weak is that the mukhabarat grew accustomed to interfering not only in elections, but also in parliamentary votes.

The mukhabarat spokesman denied any such interference, but members of Parliament said the mukhabarat could sway any electoral campaign by getting hundreds of voters to the polls, as well as providing access to government jobs for constituents, money and other facilities.

"It's a carrot and stick," said Mr. Kharabsheh, the former mukhabarat chief and current member of Parliament. "They tell the M.P.'s that whatever they want in the future, they will support them. It is well understood that they will turn against any M.P. who fails to do what they ask."

He also expressed concern about the mukhabarat branching into business - financing companies like Al-Haq Agriculture, a major farming enterprise, as well as overseas investments, all of which involve hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of employees. He has asked for details of all mukhabarat investments, but has yet to receive an answer, he said.

One longtime head of the agency, Samih Batikhi, was sentenced to four years in jail in July 2003 after being found guilty of fraud and embezzlement in a case involving shady loans to businessmen.

The last head, General Kheir, was replaced this year. Amman's overheated rumor mill - a symptom of its muted news media - suggests that his role in lobbying for government contracts played a role, but there is no public case.

The agency spokesman declined to detail its business investments, but said they were all registered and strictly legal.

'In the Eye of a Hurricane'

Senior security officials like the former interior minister Samir Habashneh argue that freedoms taken for granted in Western democracies cannot be practiced in Jordan because it sits, as he put it, "in the eye of a hurricane." With an unstable Iraq across one border and frequent violence across another in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, senior officials say Jordan's secret police must work overtime to ensure the kingdom's stability, its main selling point.

If the security agencies relaxed their vigilance and civil liberties were granted without condition, it would lead to more bloody chaos like the bombings here, they argue.

Any conversation with senior security officials invariably harks back to 1970, when the Hashemite dynasty held onto the throne by facing down armed Palestinian factions on Amman's streets. Security officials say that their vigilance prevents a repeat, and that with Palestinians making up 50 percent of the population, political reform must await a solution to the Arab-Israeli dispute.

Jordanians pushing for reform call this a pretext for hanging onto power. For Mr. Qudah, nothing underscores this more than his yearlong imprisonment after reciting a poem in August 1996 that criticized the way "The Manager" runs an unidentified country. It included these lines:

He has never taken any decision

Without asking for the public's permission

Or without a public referendum

What a public

Whenever something urgent comes up

The public assembles

Then there is a comprehensive speech, whipped up by the Manager

Followed by an ululation and a blessing

And the auction is open for whistling, drumming and for honking

And afterwards, the audience claps

And this is the consensus in my state

And this is freedom of expression

His 10-day interrogation, though civil, focused on whether he was trying to incite anti-government unrest and whether he belonged to any secret organization. He believes the jail sentence from the military-run State Security Court was preordained after he was charged with slander.

He spent the year at Suwaga prison in the southern desert playing soccer and leading seminars on the need for political and social change. "That year just deepened my sense that reform is necessary and made me want to challenge the system more," he said.

Trouble with the security services creates a ripple effect. Mr. Qudah says he has never been allowed to publish anything here, although Jordanian critics find his work subtle and witty.

When he was arrested again in 2004 he expected another jail sentence, but a tribal elder who represents his district in Parliament and is a government ally intervened. Mr. Qudah was sprung after 24 hours.

The spokesman said he was unfamiliar with the case, but denied the mukhabarat would jail someone for poetry alone.

Like many Arabs seeking reform, Mr. Qudah is torn by Washington pushing the issue. The pressure helps bring change, but the model offered by the Americans is Iraq.

He finds a certain hypocrisy in the official American outlook. "They gave the green light to all these Arab leaders to create police states, then the reaction was religious extremism," he said. "You raise someone for 50 years to go the wrong way down a one-way street and then suddenly tell them that they have to respect the law. I don't think any of these regimes are capable of creating a democratic reality."

Mr. Qudah wants Arabs to be able to live without fear of the mukhabarat or other forms of repression.

"If you have stability, but life is desperate, what does that bring you?" he said. "We Arabs, all of us, we are marrying, drinking, laughing, making love. So why can't we live in a free environment? Why can't our freedom just be one aspect among many in our lives. Why do we have to wait? What for? We've been waiting for more than 50 years."

Suha Maayeh contributed reporting for this article.

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[Oh, Gee!!]

De-moh-craw-see, sound it out.

[ChumpDumper]

I wonder why were still patroling the DMZ in between south and north korea... some 50 years after the korean war....? Lets not forget more recently kosovo.. hey why the hell does the UN still have troops all over africa and some parts of the middle east.. lolAre you saying we are going to stay in Iraq for 50 years?

[Mr. Peabody]

De-moh-craw-see, sound it out.

De-moh-craw-see or De-maw-crah-see?

Your way sounds French, which means it is un-American
________
Glass Pipe (http://glasspipes.net/)

[Spurminator]

De-maw-kre-see de-maw-kre-do?


(Crickets)

[ChumpDumper]

Damn Spurm, I should ban you for the rest of the day for that.

[Spurminator]

:lol

Shameless self-amusement. I apologize.

[Extra Stout]

In two years the US can't bring stability to a region that has been unstable for thousands of years? Shocking.

When you say "for thousands of years," do you really mean "since the end of World War I when the Europeans were put in charge" ?

Seems to me the Ottoman Empire was pretty stable, if not exactly terribly functional, for a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time.

[Extra Stout]

De-moh-craw-see or De-maw-crah-see?

Your way sounds French, which means it is un-American

The Farsi word for "democracy" is pronounced "de-moo-crah-see."

Just saying.

[Dos]

chump we are always going to have a presence in iraq.. get used to it...

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/maps/world/fullpage.troop.deployments/map.troop.deployments.world.gif

[Oh, Gee!!]

This calls for more air strikes. They don't love democracy? They will.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

So when you call him "Shrub", it's based on articles found elsewhere. When I call you a vagina, it's personal opinion? :lol

Fucking great logic. Every time you post it's the equivalent of the Spurstalk queaf.

[exstatic]

I don't know, the burden is on you. We're not bitching about Reagan or Nixon.

As far as all clinton defenders go, I got this to say.

Monica didn't swallow, why do the Democrats have to?

It wasn't directed at you, but since you seem confused, I'll use small words to explain. There was a reference to Bush not wanting to pull out of Iraq. AHF mentioned Clinton having pulled out, presumably from either Monica or Somalia. I then mentioned two GOP president's that pulled out: Reagan after the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon, and Nixon from Vietnam. No "burden" of proof neccessary. It's an historical fact. Got it, sporto?

[boutons]

call me whatever you want, AHF, you opinions have no foundation in fact no matter what.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Yeah, and if you sit there every morning, stare into the mirror and say "I'm tall enough, strong enough, and gosh darn it people like me" long enough, you'll probably start believing that too croutons.

[RandomGuy]

I wonder why were still patroling the DMZ in between south and north korea... some 50 years after the korean war....? Lets not forget more recently kosovo.. hey why the hell does the UN still have troops all over africa and some parts of the middle east.. lol

I think we should completely pull out of South Korea.

North Korea's military capability is not what it used to be.

North Korea would never attack without Chinese approval, which they would never get with South Korea becoming a larger trading partner with China than the anemic North will ever be.

Someday North Korea will collapse under it's own mismanagement.

BUT

That is another thread.