Interesting to watch the changes coming in the middle east and to think….President Bush was behind much of this.
We have seen our vulnerability – and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny – prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder – violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.
We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.
So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.
– President George W. Bush (Second Inaugural Address)
Egyptian President Mubarek’s days are numbered it appears, under strong pressure from the Egyptian people and the U.S. to make an orderly transition to democracy.
The Bush Doctrine….that doctrine which was his justification for toppling the Taliban and Saddam. It wasn’t enough to destroy al-Qaeda and the Iraqi WMD’s but to turn those countries into strong democracies so that they could be a beacon for the rest of the middle east.
“Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter?”
Both Iraq and Afghanistan have had free elections and are on their way to democracy, albeit slowly and with a few bumps in the road….as our country had. But look towards Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen….
Can you tell me that President Bush’s doctrine didn’t play any part in moving towards this point? The same doctrine that was sneered at by the left as unrealistic and naive.
The fragile balance of race and religion, managed by rulers of Mesopotamia for centuries by repression, has been destroyed. The invaders did this in the name of democracy, a concept unaccepted to date in the Arab world and one that is totally unrealistic for Iraq.
Totally unrealistic that human beings would want to live free?
Well maybe it wasn’t until Obama gave his speech that the Middle East then decided that “hey…maybe freedom isn’t unrealistic!”
Yeaaaaah.
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