A Blogger Needs Your Help
An Egyptian blogger needs our help.
She’s in jail for no other reason than criticizing the Egyptian government and protesting the jailing of other dissidents. No one, on either side of the political spectrum, should sit idle. Repression ought to be an affront to all of us.
And while those of us here in America are writing the Egyptian government, it’s worth a letter or two to our own government asking why we send so many billions of dollars to Mubarak every year. What does it buy us?
Let’s get in there and see if we can help.
UPDATE: Alaa, the imprisoned blogger, is a she. Pronoun corrected.
No related posts.
Category: Our Foreign Policy
There are two reasons why we send billions to Mubarak every year. First, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel. The aid they get is considered a reward for that. More importantly, Mubarak keeps the Muslim Brotherhood at bay. He does this by jailing people that criticize the government and by keeping dissidents off the ballot. If Mubarak did not do these unpleasant things, the Muslim Brotherhood would be running the country and we'd have even more problems in the Middle East. On a positive note, Egypt is a more open country than Saudi Arabia. And we have the same policy there, as well. The problem with Middle Eastern deomcracy for the US is that the people of the Middle East hate the US. When they are given democracy, they elect people that share their hatred for the US.
Oddly enough. Tom, some of that isn't actually true. While Mubarak is not great friend of the MB and vice-versa, he's been spending a lot of his time throwing pro-democracy dissenters into prison. Alaa would be one of those folks. And while Egypt has signed a peace treaty with Israel, it has never stopped spreading its anti-Semitic propaganda including a recent film that again largely used the fraudulent "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion". It's leading religious teachers regularly preach anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism based not on real-world events but on the Koran.
The real problem with Middle-Eastern democracy is that it doesn't exist save in Iraq and Israel.
I'm not sure I'd consider Iraq to be a democracy. The most recent election in Iraq was no more open than those of Iran. That's pretty good by Middle East standards, but hardly democratic. And the backdoor selection of a prime minister that follewed was definatley not democratic. Even with the extensive US manipulation, Iraq has produced a leader that has ties to Muqta al Sadr and favors something pretty close to Sharia law. On the plus side, al-Maliki does support the presence of US troops, but mainly because they will keep him in power. There is a better example of Middle East democracy, and that is Palestine. And they elected Hamas to lead them. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have both moved a little toward democracy, with the result that the Muslim Britherhood has gained more power. I cannot think of any example where the push for democracy in the Middle East has led to the election of candidates favorable to the US. Given this, it is no surprise that Mubarak jails secular pro-democracy writers as well is Islamist pro-democracy writers. When the people are given a real choice, they choose Islamist parties over pro-US parties. And they have done so in Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. And they will do the same in the next Turkish elections. I'm all for democracy in the Middle East, but I harbour no illusions that we will like the results.