By Joseph J. Honick
Even as we in the West love what we call "democracy", reality is that we did not invent the idea, and it has taken us a few hundred years to get even where we are. Along the way, it took all sorts of intramural wars, demonstrations, even riots and marches just to make that progress … and goodness knows we still have many miles to go.
So just what are we talking about in our grandiose declarations to a world that has not known anything close to what we have struggled to create and remains imperfect even as it is? Answer: it is a gross hypocrisy preaching democracy when the terms are hardly always agreed upon … here or there!
Even beyond the hypocrisy is the massive danger as a new debate emerges and those who have rioted against a sitting dictator fail to define for themselves what they actually mean about something called "democracy." Nor does anyone seem to know who is in charge of all this "activity."
Will it mean that all people are eligible to run for office…Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Secularists, whites, blacks? Who in any of this is prepared just for that answer that is key to democratic governance?
It is one thing to press for a change in leadership even for presumably valid reasons. It is quite another to prescribe what comes next and who gets to say what that is supposed to look like.
Do we really, really believe we can simply turn loose what has been a raging mob that is only part of a larger population that may or may not agree with the overthrow of an unpopular president?
For those not familiar with what was going on in the early years of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration, a much more sophisticated bunch of disenchanted people with plenty of financial wherewithal actually tried to bring about an overthrow of the White House.
They even tried to enlist the only two-time winner of the Medal of Honor, a Marine Corps hero and former Brigadier General, to lead the coup. Fortunately, his concern for the country forced him to blow the whistle on the plot, yet no one was even indicted and certainly not put in jail. The names behind all that chicanery included some of the most revered labels of American industry and finance.
And all that happened in our own wonderful democracy!
A chart in The Economist magazine, no unsophisticated source, the overall ranking of Arab League nations out of 167 nations in the world as to democracy, the highest turned out to be Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories as 86 and 93 respectively, with even wealthy and powerful Saudi Arabia ranking 160. None of the rest made it higher than 111. The current subject of debate, Egypt, only made it to 138.
What then is the magic prescription that can emerge if President Mubarak is suddenly brought down? Why is it not better, given the hints the man now finally senses his own fragile place at the top and can participate in his own departure…a more peaceful one at that, with more intelligent time and organization to strategize for whatever version of democracy that might emerge? After all, an additional reality, among many others, is that the major oil empires of the Arab world could just as quickly fall to such action.
It is not as if there are no causes for population upset. But the irrational looting, fire bombings and other actions frequently spawned by revolt when the usual forces of control cannot function effectively all can combine to result in more combustible internal conflict.
But there are other, far more sensitive and dangerous questions.
For example:
- Does President Obama have a clear idea of our own national interest in all of this?
- Do we actually have much influence given our own miscalculations in Iraq and Afghanistan?
- Have we analyzed the impact of the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, no doubt with help from Hamas and Iran, who forbid women and Coptic Christians from running for office?
- Has the President engaged his political opposition and major industry leaders familiar with the area to develop strategy?
- Can Israel merely stand still waiting to be surrounded by those now more than ever committed to her destruction? Would we under similar circumstances? After all, we have been at war in countries far removed from our shores for almost a decade.
- Have we seriously fumbled the ball here?
At the moment, we are not looking and sounding like world leaders, and we are hardly immune to what can follow.
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Joseph J. Honick is an international consultant
to business and government and writes for many publications,
including huntingtonnews.net. Honick can be reached
at [email protected]. |