"Spread Democracy" or "Spread the Wealth" Revolutions?

Before stepping down as Egypt's President, Hosni Mubarak had harsh words for the Obama administration's vocal support for democracy movements in Egypt, Tunisia, and the entire Middle East.  Mubarak warned former Israeli cabinet minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer:

We see the democracy the United States spearheaded in Iran and with Hamas, in Gaza, and that's the fate of the Middle East.  They may be talking about democracy but they don't know what they're talking about and the result will be extremism and radical Islam.

Ben-Eliezer told Haaretz that on the eve of Mubarak's stepping down as Egypt's President, Mubarak shared his prediction for what will follow in the Middle East:

He contended the snowball (of civil unrest) won't stop in Egypt and it wouldn't skip any Arab country in the Middle East and in the Gulf.  He said 'I won't be surprised if in the future you see more extremism and radical Islam and more disturbances -- dramatic changes and upheavals'.

Will Mubarak's warning prove prophetic, or was it merely the parting bluster of a man who believed, with good reason, that he alone held the religious radicals in his nation at bay for more than 30 years?  Events in other Arab nations offer an immediate opportunity to observe the accuracy of Mubarak's predictions.  In Yemen and Algeria, protests are creating fertile ground for radical Islamist elements to merge their long-term goals with the short-term protesters' goals of toppling their existing governments. 

Photo by Reuters

When the many thousands of Algerian protesters claim they are marching for liberty and freedom, are they actually demanding self-determination - a worthy goal consistent with America's democratic values - or are they seeking to level the economic or social playing field because others within their culture have more opportunity and wealth?  Reports out of Algiers suggest that many ingredients that led to the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt are also influencing the street protests in Algeria: (1) high unemployment; (2) Growing gap between rich and poor; and (3) large and restless youth population.  All of these ingredients, if not also motivated by a desire for self-determination and common law, will lead to the same half-baked confection: redistribution of wealth, and, in the case of the French and Soviet revolutions, purging of the wealthy and influential classes in mass bloodshed.

At this point, the ultimate goals and democratic desires of the Algerian and Yemeni protesters remains undefined and frighteningly fluid.  Protests nearly always begin by riding rapidly on a wave of emotion that crests when it appears the initially specific goal has been reached.  In Egypt's case, that initial specific goal was to oust Mubarak.  That goal has now been reached, but what goals beyond the ouster do the protesters have in common?  Iraq proved that toppling a dictator and gleeful celebrations are not the end of political upheaval.  The devil is in the details, and the "details" that established a democratically elected government in Baghdad included much bloodshed, radical Islamist terrorism to discourage the people, and eventually a constitution.  The purple-stained index fingers of voting Iraqis came with a price paid long after the statues of Saddam Hussein were jubilantly dismantled. 

In the absence of clear leadership among protest groups, confusion mounts as to the way forward in the vacuum left by the toppling of an existing government.  In Egypt, the "details" remain to be determined, but Mubarak is likely right that many devils, as it were, will work feverishly to gain strong footholds in vulnerable political climates.  Protesters in Yemen and Algeria face a similar conundrum.  Calling for "government reform" is ambiguous, carrying very different connotations for the myriad largely incompatible political, social, and religious groups united for one moment in time for the sake of "change." 

The Obama administration is in a difficult position.  The world expects America to support democracy and democratic revolutions wherever they arise.  However, the administration must recognize its limitations and avoid knee-jerk support to civil unrest, or "change" for the sake of "change", before gaining a clear understanding of the forces and motives behind Middle East protests.  Revolutions can become ugly very quickly if they are engaged in for societal or economic leveling rather than for constitutional freedoms and protection of inalienable rights. 

The governments in Algeria and Yemen are currently in a dangerous state of vulnerability.  Yemen has been a strategic ally of the United States in the War on Terror.  That term is not popular in the Obama administration, which took office pledging to purge all things Bush.  However, President Obama has slowly recognized when faced with stark reality, that this IS still a war against terrorist ideology.  In war, key allies should not be abandoned at the first opportunity, even if standing with the ally means ignoring its warts and impurities.  Stalin was murdering millions of his own countrymen before, during, and after, WWII, but in the larger was against a radical ideology, the United States turned a blind eye to Stalin's atrocities because the war against Hitler could not be won without him.  By its strategic location and past assistance in identifying and locating terror suspects and operational networks, overlooking Yemeni President Saleh's imperfections may prove the best course for America's interests in a larger struggle against radical Islam.  America's presidents are elected to serve and protect the interests of America, even if that means that at times we form temporary alliances with unsavory or even oppressive governments.  Even in these cases, however, we must never cease encouraging even the most bloodthirsty dictators or regimes to reform.




Mubarak's prediction of a snowball of unrest in the Middle East, that will leave no country untouched, is, in my estimation, accurate.  Radical Islamists will undoubtedly attempt to fill power vacuums throughout the region, attempting to expand their spheres of influence.  President Obama must walk a fine line between encouraging freedom and democratic reforms, as he must, while holding onto key alliances in the War on Terror. 

Levin is Surge Report Misinformation Minister

When war news is good, it stands to reason that the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee should be pleased. After all, there should be no question that a senator holding such an important and influential position would want America’s military to win any war it enters. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), who currently chairs the Armed Services Committee is embarking on another “fact finding” trip to Iraq, but he is not going there to be supportive of the troops or to witness firsthand the widely-reported successes of the surge strategy led by General David Petraeus. On the contrary, Levin’s latest trip to Iraq serves, as explained in his own words, only one purpose:

I'm going to try to see if we can't shift the attention of the American people from the report on the military situation to a report on the political situation since everybody acknowledges that it's the failure of the political arena and the political areas that are the cause of the ongoing violence in Iraq.

That was a revealing and disturbing statement. Rarely does a politician so bluntly state that he is engaging in an intentional misinformation campaign designed to “shift the attention of the American people” away from a detailed military report that proves we are making significant progress and can win a war we committed troops to fight. Clearly senior Democrats do not want Americans to read the Petraeus report due in September, and Americans should pause for a moment to ponder the motive behind Levin’s Iraq trip as Minister of Misinformation.

Congressional Democrats are in an unenviable political position: having voted almost unanimously to send troops into Iraq; shifting to a virulent anti-war position; demanding a timetable for troop withdrawals; opposing the surge strategy; and now facing the release of a positive analysis of the surge’s effectiveness and optimism for eventual troop withdrawals under more favorable security and political conditions in Iraq.

During his presidency, media figures and congressional Democrats have insulted President Bush with labels such as “inept,” “incompetent,” “mentally unstable,” and of course “stupid.” Yet no such labels are applied by the media to the Democratic Party as a whole for its remarkable blunder of putting itself in position to profit politically only from military failure. Our troops lose, Democrats win. In that respect at least, the grim and incessant media comparisons between the Vietnam and Iraq wars are appropriate. There is an Iraq quagmire. Democrats stepped in it by investing their political futures in defeat in Iraq, but now they cannot seem to scrape the pesky quagmire ooze from their patent-leather shoes.

It is no wonder that on July 30th House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) stated that such a report from the military would be “a real big problem for us.” In other words, good news from the front lines in Iraq would be harmful to the Democrats’ political ambitions. To prevent such a “disaster” from occurring, Minister of Misinformation Levin will be working overtime shifting attention away from Petraeus’ report, which is already being dismissed in the media as merely an instrument for communicating what the Bush administration wants. Liberal bloggers have already attacked the report, which none of them have seen even a portion of, as a “fantasy evaluation” and just another Bush “sandbagging” of the American people.

Considering the recent foreign policy and military counterterrorism strategy gaffes by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, it appeared that no Democratic senator could be equally as naïve as Obama on those issues. Yet Levin’s explanation of why American’s should pay no attention to the upcoming Iraq progress report by General Petraeus demonstrated a fundamental ignorance or intentional obfuscation of what is causing the current level of violence in Iraq. Is there internal strife within the Iraqi Parliament? Of course there is strife there, just as there is bitter partisan strife within our own Congress. In Iraq, Sunni legislative blocs occasionally withdraw from the government in anger over real or perceived slights and injustices. In our Congress there are filibusters, blocked votes on judicial confirmations or cabinet appointments, and leaks of classified information to embarrass or destroy political rivals. In many respects, our Congress is more dysfunctional than the Iraqi parliament, yet our nation is not awash in suicide bombings, IEDs, and foreign-inspired terrorist groups infesting entire cities, which are all too common in Iraq.

As Iraqi parliamentarians are not detonating themselves in protest or killing each other over political disputes, the explanation for the violence in Iraq must go beyond mere politics. Failure by the Iraqi government to achieve rapid political unity and success, as Levin and his colleagues demand, may cause political discord, but to assert that the war in Iraq centers on political issues is far too simplistic. Religious disputes, more than politics, fan the flames of disunity, but without the violent interference of terrorists pouring in from neighboring nations, Iraqis would be in a much better position to engage in political discourse. That is what we are trying to achieve in Iraq: Remove foreign influences and provide sufficient security and public safety to allow Iraqis to resolve their differences and govern themselves unhindered by neighboring nations.

The Iraqi people have already achieved something Americans have not yet accomplished. Iraqis have united in recognizing that their enemy is al Qaeda rather than each other. Sunni and Shiite Iraqis have joined together in driving al Qaeda out of entire provinces. In contrast, nearly thirty percent of Americans believe that the Bush administration rather than al Qaeda brought down the World Trade Center towers with pre-placed demolition charges. If recognizing who our real enemies are is a sign of national survival instinct, America is woefully lacking, while Iraqis appear capable of uniting when self-preservation is at stake.

Leave it to a career politician like Levin to overestimate politics as the solution to all of Iraq’s current ills while ignoring the critical need for public safety and security in what clearly is a military confrontation with terrorist groups funded, trained, and equipped outside of Iraq and inserted into that nation as a destabilizing influence. The Iraqi government will never succeed in its political duties or live up to Levin’s benchmarks for success until al Qaeda in Iraq and other terrorist insurgents are decisively defeated, disbanded, and their demise displayed to the world as a deterrent from further foreign treachery in Iraq.

That will only happen through victory by our troops there and continued strengthening of the Iraqi military. General Petraeus’s September report will demonstrate that the surge strategy is working, which should be received as welcome news by all Americans. All Americans that is, except for those who, like Harry Reid and his fellow party leaders, have already declared the surge a failure and the war lost. In Reid’s case, he has already determined that he will not believe anything Petraeus reports if it includes good news about the surge . There is an ironic oxymoron in the nation’s highest ranking liberal being so decidedly close-minded. Democratic abandonment of Petraeus and the surge was an abrupt and hypocritical change in Democratic “support” for both considering the fact that earlier this year the senate voted 81-0 to confirm him as the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq knowing precisely what his intended plan of action would be.

Over the next several weeks while congress enjoys its summer recess away from Washington, Americans will be bombarded by media reports of Levin’s “findings” from his current trip to Iraq. We will witness a carefully calculated misinformation campaign that Levin himself admits is meant to distract people from the substance of General Petraeus’ pending war report. When politicians work so hard to discredit a military report or minimize the attention given to it, it should peak our interest in what is reported and why one party’s anti-war base considers it “a big problem.”

Americans should respond by rejecting the misinformation ploys and reading every word of the report, making their own decisions as to its veracity and impact on public support for the war effort.

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General Petraeus, Carl Levin, James Clyburn, Surge Strategy, Iraq War, Misinformation, Surge Progress Report, Iraqi Government, Al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Anti-War Democrats