Egypt calls for democratic reforms! Another Bush victory. This is the policy you opposed, fools.

  • Thread starter Theo van Gogh Martyrs Brigade
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Theo van Gogh Martyrs Brigade

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Events continue to vindicate the Bush foreign policy.

Today's news out of Egypt:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Egypt-Presidential-Elections.html?hp&ex=1109480400&en=66afeb8e23b5625e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

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Egypt's Mubarak Calls for Democratic Election Reforms

In a surprise and dramatic reversal, President Hosni Mubarak took a first significant step Saturday toward democratic reform in the world's most populous Arab country, ordering the constitution changed to allow presidential challengers on the ballot this fall.
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The sudden shift was the first sign from the key U.S. ally that it was ready to participate in the democratic evolution in the Middle East, particularly historic elections in Iraq and the Palestinian territories. Mubarak's government has faced increasingly vocal opposition at home and growing friction with the United States over the lack of reform.
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The announcement came amid a sharp dispute with the United States over reform -- particularly over the arrest of Nour, head of the opposition Al-Ghad party.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized Nour's detention and put off a Mideast visit planned for next week. A senior U.S. official cited Rice's displeasure with the arrest and other Egyptian actions and said Rice wanted to see what steps were taken before going to Cairo.
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While it's unclear whether these reforms will be real or just show, they do come after the dramatic, historic election in Iraq, and after pressure from Bush and Rice.

And so, the march towards democracy in the Middle East takes another significant step, and it is thanks to the much-demonized Bush foreign policy of regime change in Iraq and promoting democratic reforms throughout the Middle East.

Each month that passes convinces me all the more that the Bush haters are in imminent danger of becoming the fools of history. Which, of course, they deserve, as they stood on the side opposed to advancing democracy in the part of the world where it has become most urgent for the safety of us all.

Don't say I didn't warn ya all along!

Now check this out. The Weekly Standard's William Kristol quotes testimonials from Old Middle East, Old Europe, and Old New York.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/292bhhzj.asp

OLD MIDDLE EAST
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From the Middle East, listen to Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze Muslim leader and member of parliament, formerly an accommodator of the Syrian occupation and no friend of the Bush administration or its predecessors. On February 21, Jumblatt, in Beirut, told the Washington Post's David Ignatius that he is determined to work to get the current Syrian-stooge government out of office and to get Syrian troops out of Lebanon. What accounts
for his new sentiment--echoing and echoed by millions of others, in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East? Here's Jumblatt:

"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. . . . The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."
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OLD EUROPE
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From Old Europe, listen to Claus Christian Malzahn of Der Spiegel, writing under the headline "Could George W. Bush Be Right?" Malzahn's answer: Perhaps.

"President Ronald Reagan's visit to Berlin in 1987 was, in many respects, very similar to President George W. Bush's visit to Mainz on Wednesday. . . . The Germany Reagan was traveling in, much like today's Germany, was very skeptical of the American president and his foreign policy. When Reagan stood before the Brandenburg Gate--and the Berlin Wall--and demanded that Gorbachev "tear down this wall," he was lampooned the next day on the editorial pages. He is a dreamer, wrote commentators. Realpolitik looks different.

"But history has shown that it wasn't Reagan who was the dreamer as he voiced his demand. Rather, it was German politicians who were lacking in imagination--a group who in 1987 couldn't imagine that there might be an alternative to a divided Germany. . . . When George W. Bush requests that Chancellor Schröder--who, by the way, was also not entirely complimentary of Reagan's 1987 speech--and Germany become more engaged in the Middle East, everybody on the German side will nod affably. But . . . Bush's idea of a Middle Eastern democracy imported at the tip of a bayonet is, for Schröder's Social Democratic party and his coalition partner the Green party, the hysterical offspring of the American neocons. Even German conservatives find the idea that Arab countries could transform themselves into enlightened democracies somewhat absurd. . . .
Europeans today--just like the Europeans of 1987--cannot imagine that the world might change. Maybe we don't want the world to change, because change can, of course, be dangerous. But in a country of immigrants like the United States, one actually pushes for change. In Mainz today, the stagnant Europeans came face to face with the dynamic Americans. We Europeans always want to have the world from yesterday, whereas the Americans strive for the world of tomorrow. . . .

"It was difficult not to cringe during Reagan's speech in 1987. He didn't leave a single Berlin cliché out of his script. At the end of it, most experts agreed that his demand for the removal of the wall was inopportune, utopian and crazy.

"Yet three years later, East Germany had disappeared from the map. Gorbachev had a lot to do with it, but it was the East Germans who played the larger role. When analysts are confronted by real people, amazing things can happen. And maybe history can repeat itself. Maybe the people of Syria, Iran, or Jordan will get the idea in their heads to free themselves from their oppressive regimes just as the East Germans did. When the voter turnout in Iraq recently exceeded that of many Western nations, the chorus of critique from Iraq alarmists was, at least for a couple of days, quieted. Just as quiet as the chorus of Germany experts on the night of November 9, 1989, when the wall fell.

"Just a thought for Old Europe to chew on: Bush might be right, just like Reagan was then."
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You can read the whole Der Spiegel article here: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,343378,00.html

OLD NEW YORK
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As for Old New York, listen to Kurt Andersen in the February 21 New York magazine:

"Our heroic and tragic liberal-intellectual capaciousness is facing its sharpest test since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back then, most of us were forced, against our wills, to give Ronald Reagan a large share of credit for winning the Cold War. Now the people of this Bush-hating city are being forced to grant the merest possibility that Bush, despite his annoying manner and his administration's awful hubris and dissembling and incompetence concerning Iraq, just might--might, possibly--have been correct to invade, to occupy, and to try to enable a democratically elected government in Iraq. . . .

"It won't do simply to default to our easy predispositions--against Bush, even against war. If partisanship makes us abandon intellectual honesty, if we oppose what our opponents say or do simply because they are the ones saying or doing it, we become mere political short-sellers, hoping for bad news because it's good for our ideological investment."
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Jurt Andersen is saying exactly what I tried to warn these misguided, pessimistic, cynical folks for a few years now. Glad some of them are finally waking up.
 
"We Europeans always want to have the world from yesterday, whereas the Americans strive for..

From Der Spiegel:

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,343378,00.html

"We Europeans always want to have the world from yesterday, whereas the Americans strive for the world of tomorrow."

Very true!

Why, you can even see it in Morrissey's songs....
 
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