Mountain Views News          Saturday, February 5, 2011

12

LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

 Mountain Views News Saturday, January 22, 2011 

GREG Welborn

Democracy & 

The Middle East


HOWARD Hays

 As I See It


U.S. foreign policy has for too long emphasized 
stability of supposedly friendly regimes over the 
democratic desires of the people living under 
those regimes. This has been in ample evidence in 
the Middle East and is often referred to as “foreign 
policy realism”. Unfortunately for us and for those 
who live in the Middle East, the reality right now 
is a potentially uncontrollable revolution in Egypt. 
If we’re lucky, it’ll end in a tolerant democracy, but 
don’t bet on it. With the Muslim Brotherhood 
involved, the odds are stacked against us.

Sadly, it didn’t need to be this way. George 
W. Bush launched his second term putting the 
spread of democracy and freedom at the head 
of his international agenda. He promised “all 
who live in tyranny and hopelessness” that “the 
United States will not ignore your oppression, or 
excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your 
liberty, we will stand with you.” Bush made it 
clear that his “Bush doctrine” would even apply 
to undemocratic allies like Egypt, amplifying 
the theme by stating, “Throughout the Middle 
East, the fear of free choices can no longer justify 
the denial of liberty. It is time to abandon the 
excuses that are made to avoid the hard work of 
democracy.”

Some scoffed at Bush’s naïveté, suggesting 
that many people in the world weren’t ready for, 
nor did they really want, U.S. style democracy 
and freedom. No one knows how the mass 
demonstrations and threats of violence now 
shaking the Arab world – most significantly 
in evidence in Egypt right now - will end, but 
it would seem that these events vindicate the 
“freedom agenda”. The demonstrators are sending 
us a pretty clear message that supporting freedom 
is the best policy of all.

There is, however, one caveat that must be 
added to the concept of supporting freedom and 
democracy. It may seem chauvinistic, or even 
imperialistic, to say, but freedom and democracy 
had better lead to democratic pluralism, the 
rule of law, property rights, the protection of 
minorities, and respect for human dignity. Too 
often, freedom and democracy means that one 
intolerant, power-hungry despot is elected to 
replace another.

The right type of democratic freedom really is 
the best policy, and a sense of political realism 
is necessary in deciding who to assist, how to 
assist them and when to assist them. Timing is 
everything. Do the assembled masses in Cairo 
really want a true liberal democracy? Or do they 
just want the opportunity to vote into power 
the Muslim Brotherhood or Hezbollah proxies? 
These are fair questions to ask, not only for our 
own good, but for the ultimate good of the people 
in the Middle East. In a society where the vast 
majority of the public supports the death penalty 
for anyone who leaves Islam or where they wish 
to relegate women to virtual slavery at the hands 
of their husband, giving them the right to vote at 
this particular time may not be the wisest strategy. 

Unfortunately, US foreign policy architects have 
not demonstrated a very good understanding of 
the importance of timing in foreign affairs. Many 
years have been wasted wherein we could have 
been gradually nudging Hosni Mubarak from 
power in a manner that would have allowed the 
more centrist, secular and non-radical factions in 
Egypt to assume greater legitimacy and ultimately 
to lead the country. With the transition to the 
Obama administration, the freedom agenda was 
seen as just one more hold-over of the Bush era 
that had to be abandoned. It 
was too simplistically seen 
as yet another example of 
American meddling.

So, when the Iranian 
government crushed 
democratic protests in 2009, 
President Obama refused to 
get involved, unwilling to be seen as meddling 
in Iranian affairs. Federal funding for programs 
promoting Egyptian democracy have been 
dramatically cut. Obama paid little attention 
to the revolution that had already occurred in 
Tunisia, or to what was developing in Egypt. 
Before that, as Hezbollah seized power in 
Lebanon, little of any significance was done by 
this administration that has so pompously and 
self-servingly proclaimed that they would bring 
ethics and principles to politics. Instead, this 
administration has cozied up to the likes of the 
oligarchs of Russia, the Communists of China 
and the petty dictators of any land where a hint of 
colonialistic guilt prevented them from speaking 
the plain truth. Two months ago, when Mubarak 
claimed victory in an “election” so obviously 
fraudulent that most Egyptians boycotted the 
polls, US Ambassador Frank Ricciardone went on 
public Egyptian T.V. to offer congratulations from 
the United States. 

Because of the wasted opportunities – the 
two years when this administration could have 
chosen to support the freedom agenda and 
maintain the pressure on Mubarak to release 
his hold, restore human rights, free the political 
prisoners and prepare for a democratic transition 
– we are now faced with the unpleasant choice 
between the dictator we know and should detest 
(Mubarak) and the dictator we should fear even 
more (The Muslim Brotherhood). Because of 
our lack of support and involvement, there is no 
viable secular and truly pluralistic opposition 
party to step into the breach that is forming. 
We can pray for a miracle, but we need to now 
prepare for how to deal with an organization 
that has publicly declared its long term policy to 
be the “elimination and destruction of western 
civilization and sabotaging its miserable house 
so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made 
victorious over all other religions”.

While there are undoubtedly many Egyptians 
that want nothing more than democracy, freedom, 
a better life for their kids and a mutual tolerance 
of religious beliefs, they will more than likely be 
overwhelmed by the better organized and more 
ruthless Muslim Brotherhood. The radicalism 
of this organization is not just a threat to the U.S. 
They are a threat to the well being of all Egyptians.

When all is said and done, the current sense of 
foreign policy realism has not served us as well as 
adherence to our own founding principles would 
have. It turns out that supporting freedom is in 
fact the best policy. In the long run, it offers greater 
stability, precludes the rise of extremism and is the 
only thing truly worthy of a great nation such as 
ours. Truly liberal, pluralistic democracies need 
to be nurtured. If we don’t see that as our task and 
calling, I fear for the fate of the Middle East and 
the rest of the world.

About the author: Gregory J. Welborn is a 
freelance writer and has spoken to several civic 
and religious organizations on cultural and moral 
issues. He lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife 
and 3 children and is active in the community. He 
can be reached at gregwelborn@earthlink.net.

A couple weeks ago, President 
Obama emphasized the 
importance of education in his 
State of the Union speech. I’m 
concerned knowledge of even 
basic concepts, like separating 
fact from belief, is worse than 
he suggested.

The president gave special attention to science. 
A few days after the speech, I heard Rep. Jack 
Kingston (R-GA) on Bill Maher’s HBO show 
proclaim he doesn’t “believe” in evolution. He 
seemed unaware that evolution is not a “belief”, 
but is science - and has been universally accepted 
as such for almost a century.

He’s not alone, especially among Republicans. 
According to a recent Gallup poll, 40% of 
Americans believe God created humans 10,000 
years ago, but a 52% majority of Republicans do 
(vs. 34% of Democrats and independents). They 
apparently regard science as something where we 
have an option to “believe” in it or not.

A report in SCIENCE by Penn State researchers 
finds only a third of high school instructors 
teach evolution as a “theme that unifies disparate 
topics in biology”. Many, afraid of angry parents 
and board members, invite students to reach 
their own conclusions. The researchers ask, “. . 
. does a 15-year-old student really have enough 
information to reject thousands of peer-reviewed 
scientific papers? This approach tells students that 
well-established concepts like common ancestry 
can be debated in the same way we debate 
personal opinions.”

An accompanying report ranks the U.S 34th 
among 35 developed nations in public acceptance 
of evolution (we beat out Turkey). Meanwhile, 
the State of Kentucky spends $150 million in 
public funds on a full-scale replica of Noah’s Ark 
for a Christian-themed amusement park.

On the same show, Rep. Kingston mentioned 
controversy among scientists regarding the 
validity of global warming. Fellow-panelist 
former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell 
had a one-word response: “Rubbish”. Host 
Maher added there are no scientists disputing the 
consensus who aren’t on the payroll of corporate 
polluters or their front groups.

In an interview on KFI a few days before the 
president’s speech, our state Assemblyman, Tim 
Donnelly, stepped in it by proclaiming, “most 
Californians don’t believe in global warming”; a 
point which has nothing to do with the science, 
even if it were true.

Back in high school along with Science, we had a 
class called “Current Events”, wherein we’d learn 
how election results can reveal an electorate’s 
views. The vote last November to defeat Prop. 
23, the measure to suspend California’s anti-
global-warming act, by an almost 2-to-1 margin 
would’ve been cited as a good indicator of whether 
“Californians don’t believe in global warming”.

In college we had Poli Sci, and in ancient Greece 
they studied “rhetoric”. While listening to the 
KFI interview, I thought how in either course 
Assemblyman Donnelly would’ve learned that 
references to “rabid environmentalists” and 
warnings the Air Resources Board has “declared 
war on California” are unlikely to get people to 
take you seriously, and in conjunction with calls 
to ease the availability of assault weapons might 
get people to approach you a bit warily.

 In his column last week, columnist Greg Welborn 
alluded to one of my favorite subjects, History. 
As we learned in grade-school English, though, 
“history” is presumed to be non-fiction rather 
than fiction. Talking points from corporate 
lobbyists and front groups might be creative 
fiction, but not “history”.

Greg’s statement that “during these years” of 
Democratic control of Congress and the White 
House, “government financial regulations forced 
banks to lend to borrowers who clearly couldn’t 
afford the mortgages” isn’t history, because it isn’t 
true. A paper containing that assertion would 
be handed back to the student with the request it 
be returned with a footnote citing at least one of 
those “regulations”, though the instructor would 
doubt one would be forthcoming.

History is based not on theoretical speculation, 
but on what actually happened. What did happen 
was Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury 
Secretaries Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, 
Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) and Wall Street lobbyists 
pushed through deregulation in the final months 
of the Clinton Administration; repealing the 
Glass-Steagall act separating banking from other 
financial activities, and enacting the Commodity 
Futures Modernization Act removing oversight 
from futures and derivatives trading.

Deregulation continued under Bush, bringing the 
Enron scandal and culminating with economic 
meltdown. Banks weren’t “forced” to make loans; 
they churned out approvals because they avoided 
risking their own money by bundling junk loans 
with decent ones, colluding with bond raters to 
get triple-A endorsements, then pawning them 
off on some easy mark (like a government pension 
fund manager). They made billions more placing 
side bets their products would turn out to be the 
junk they knew they were. And if things turned 
sour, taxpayers would go in hock for hundreds of 
billions, losing their own assets and livelihoods, 
so insiders could continue receiving multi-
million-dollar bonuses for tanking the economy.

 That’s the “history”.

 

And there’s Philosophy, where we studied the 
likes of George Santayana: “Those who do not 
remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

After class, sometimes we’d have discussions 
speculating on how current events of the day 
might be treated in the history books of the future. 
Recent court decisions against the Affordable Care 
Act, for instance, might be treated similarly to 
how we look back on the constitutional challenges 
brought against programs such as Social Security 
and Medicare. Those who dismiss threats from 
global warning might be treated with the same 
disdain of hindsight as those Vegas tour guides of 
the 1950s who’d bring groups to witness A-bomb 
tests in the Nevada desert (a pair of sunglasses for 
protection).

Today, the transformations in North Africa and 
the Near East are to become turning points of 
history; a history we don’t want to end up on the 
“wrong side” of. We need to study the mistakes 
of the past to make sure we’re not “condemned to 
repeat” them. In doing so, we should remember 
not only Santayana but the words of the late Sen. 
Patrick Moynihan (D-NY): “Everybody’s entitled 
to their own opinion, but not their own facts.”