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Originally posted by Ned
Clearly it is high time we supported true democracy in the region. The move against Arafat is a massive step in the right direction.
Clearly it is high time we supported true democracy in the region. The move against Arafat is a massive step in the right direction.
The Western world has hardly ever supported democratic reform in the Muslim world. On the contrary, most disagreeable Muslim elites are propped up by continuous Western support. Movements for democratic reform have been betrayed on several occasions.
Just one example: Saddam Husayn
"It appeared to Husayn that the Iranian government was endeavoring to destabilize his regime by aiding the Kurdish rebellion, encouraging a Shi‘a uprising, and denouncing the legitimacy of Ba‘thist rule. He resolved to topple Khomeini's government before it could fully consolidate its power. In this decision Husayn had the support of the oil-rich monarchs of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the smaller Gulf states for whom Khomeini's brand of populist, revolutionary Islam was anathema; he also had the support of the United States.
Throughout the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), the Soviet Union was Iraq's major arms supplier. But Western powers also came to Baghdad's aid. France, which was deeply involved in several large development projects in Iraq, provided Husayn's forces with Mirage jets and Super-Etendard war planes equipped with Exocet missiles. In 1984 diplomatic relations between Washington and Baghdad, severed in 1967, were restored, and the United States started to provide Iraq with military intelligence. The United States also pressured its allies not to sell weapons to Iran and, in the final year of the war, campaigned for an embargo against Iranian oil. When Iran stepped up its attacks on Kuwaiti shipping in 1987, the United States allowed Kuwait's vessels to fly the U.S. flag, thus making an attack on them equivalent to an attack on a U.S. ship. Washington also reinforced its naval presence in the Gulf, and on several occasions in 1987 and 1988, U.S. gunboats engaged in direct military actions against Iran.
Although the U.S. government and media directed nearly hysterical criticism toward Saddam Husayn and his regime during the 1990-1991 crisis, we should recall how crucial U.S. assistance to Iraq was during the earlier war. For the United States in the 1980s, the demon of the Middle East was Ayatollah Khomeini, not Saddam Husayn, and Washington was willing to ignore the brutality of Husayn's regime in order to prevent the spread of the kind of Islamic radicalism and anti-U.S. sentiment represented by Khomeini. What was at stake for the United States in this war, as perhaps in that of 1991, was not human rights but oil reserves."
(source: W.L.Cleveland : "A History of the Modern Middle East",1994)
During the '80s I was constantly disappointed by the lack of media attention for this conflict, one of the longest and most bloody wars of the century.
I am not against democratic reform in the Muslim world, but would like to point out that the result would be rather undesirable: most Muslim countries would probably install some fundamentalist anti-Western regime!
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