Wilful Blindness: The Humanitarian Left edition

[DaShi]

Look, he's a democratically elected leader and thus reflects the will of the Egyptian people.

Neo-conservatives have dreamed of democracy in the Middle East for the past 20 years. That's what Bush said USA was fighting for in Iraq, to achieve democracy in the Middle East. There it is.

USA already had 2 bloody, horribly expensive and decade-long wars in the Middle East, "for freedom" and "for democracy". There you have it, democratic Egypt that is free of foreign influence.

What do the neoconservatives want to achieve, when will they be happy? What is it that you want, exactly?

Who are you and what have you done with VJ?!!

[Dr Strangelove]

It's awful, just awful I tell you that the President of Egypt wants to free a blind preacher who screwed up a bomb plot.

Now a sergeant who walks into a village and wastes a dozen or more women and kids? That's a different story. Same with the guy who flies a pilotless bomb into the wrong building, "security guards" who shoot up a densely populated street, or a even guy who orders a war on the wrong country. We keepin' them. They ain't done nuthin' wrong. You cain't touch 'um.

You know they're right. Obama has made some really bad decisions. There are some really, really bad guys loose whos still threaten the innocent from one end of this world to the other. Come November you just might elect some of them back into power.

[Zevico]

Neocons don't want democracy, and never did. You might notice that they've been supporting dictators in the middle east for decades. Democracy just makes a really handy pretext for war.

Yes they do, by and of definition. If the term has any meaning it is a call for the implementation of democracy abroad by violence if necessary. Also, a great deal of insular projection about how much everyone else would like to live the American dream if only they realised how awful their traditions and thousand year old religions were.

Look, he's a democratically elected leader and thus reflects the will of the Egyptian people.

He was elected in elections that were free to a degree. That doesn't mean he was democratically elected. Freedom at the blo box and a fair vote count are necessary but not sufficient conditions for a democracy.

[Zevico]

What do the neoconservatives want to achieve, when will they be happy? What is it that you want, exactly?

I don't accept the label because I don't think it applies to me. Nor does it apply to the author of the above article. Frankly I question its usefulness and I think you would be better server to reframe your question.

[Zevico]

1) How is this a Right-Left issue? I mean the article even references Reagan-era support for proto-al Qaeda. If it's blindness, it's blindness from both sides.

Well, is it?
Reagan supported the Afghani peshmerga--not the Taliban per se, but groups that comprised the Northern Alliance, and yes, what would become the Taliban and Al Qaeda. He didn't do that out of humanitarianism. He did it because it was necessary to repel the Soviet invasion, which he judged to be contrary to American interests.
The Administration supports the Muslim Brotherhood because, well, (1) it's pan-Islamic and not a pan-Arab nationalist movement, (2) it's popular; (3) the Administration's ideology rejects traditional foreign policy doctrines and actually prefers the rule of popular tyrannies to the rule of tyrannies that support it; (4) it does that because it fantasises that these tyrannous movements are in fact pro-democratic, contrary to practically all evidence.

JEWS ARE THE LEFT!

Well not always but still. Let's not act like Jews are not overwhelmingly liberals.

Yes, like Netanyahu, that well known socialist-progressive straight out of a Woody Allen diatribe on jewish red diaper babies. You know, Netanyahu is a free marketeer who is quoted as saying he "speaks" Republican. And he commands the support of a majority of Israeli Jews (by way of a coalition of aligned parties that support him over all other alternatives), who have been voting in right-wing free marketeer governments for 13 of the past 16 years. This is a society that went from socialist communes to a wellspring of high-tech venture capitalists.

[Barnabas]

I think Zevico has a point.

In Argentina I saw leftists say stuff such as "this revolts in the middle east prove everybody wants more freedom and democracy, that muslims are no different from us"

Leftists just can't conceive that many people may want to live in a country that enforces islamic law and traditions in an authoritarian way. They think love for democracy is natural, universal, inherent.

[Kidlicious]

They don't want them to be democratic. They want them to be Neocons.

[Barnabas]

The Christian minorities in the middle east, who descend from the people who did not convert to Islam after the arab conquest, generally prefers the rather secular dictator and are much more afraid of the democratically elected islamist leaders.

[kentonio]

I think Zevico has a point.

You just destroyed your own argument.

In Argentina I saw leftists say stuff such as "this revolts in the middle east prove everybody wants more freedom and democracy, that muslims are no different from us"

Leftists just can't conceive that many people may want to live in a country that enforces islamic law and traditions in an authoritarian way. They think love for democracy is natural, universal, inherent.

Are you mental? Since when was it the left squealing about the evil Muslim Brotherhood/failing ME democracy etc? It's the Republicans who are happy to support dictatorships as long as they kowtow to US interests, then invade when they don't, and then piss on the very foundations of the democracy they claim to love when the citizens of the new democracy decide they want to pick their own leaders.

Yes there are a number of ME countries where the citizens want a religious based system. This doesn't mean they want an Iranian style theocracy. How about we butt the hell out and let them experiment and find systems that actually suit them, instead of imagining our own broken ****ing democracies are some kind of ideal model?

[Kidlicious]

The Christian minorities in the middle east, who descend from the people who did not convert to Islam after the arab conquest, generally prefers the rather secular dictator and are much more afraid of the democratically elected islamist leaders.

That's pretty smart of them. They probably know how Obama really is more than the american left too.

[kentonio]

The Administration supports the Muslim Brotherhood because, well, (1) it's pan-Islamic and not a pan-Arab nationalist movement, (2) it's popular; (3) the Administration's ideology rejects traditional foreign policy doctrines and actually prefers the rule of popular tyrannies to the rule of tyrannies that support it; (4) it does that because it fantasises that these tyrannous movements are in fact pro-democratic, contrary to practically all evidence.

They 'support' a party that won a democractic election you tool. By doing so they support the concept of democracy (which the US pissed all over in Egypt for decades by propping up a dictator lets not forget).

People like you literally make me sick, you preach about democracy when it suits you, and then happily **** down the neck of any semblence of freedom or democracy when it comes to people outside the first world actually expressing their own choices.

[Barnabas]

No, what I meant is that leftists saw a lot of relatively modern young guys using twitter and facebook in order to organize demonstrations against a dictator and thought! look, they also want freedom, and democracy, and western modern civil liberties!

Then, the dictator falls, and the people vote for an islamist and not a modern, democratic, liberal person, and the non muslims be them christian minority or a relatively secular person have it worse than under Mubarak, Hussein or Assad.

[Kidlicious]

Most people don't even know that there are christians in the ME.

[kentonio]

No, what I meant is that leftists saw a lot of relatively modern young guys using twitter and facebook in order to organize demonstrations against a dictator and thought! look, they also want freedom, and democracy, and western modern civil liberties!

Then, the dictator falls, and the people vote for an islamist and not a modern, democratic, liberal person, and the non muslims be them christian minority or a relatively secular person have it worse than under Mubarak, Hussein or Assad.

I'm just confused by you seemingly pointing at that as a leftist problem when the left arent the ones *****ing about it.

[C0ckney]

In Argentina I saw leftists say stuff such as "this revolts in the middle east prove everybody wants more freedom and democracy, that muslims are no different from us"

Leftists just can't conceive that many people may want to live in a country that enforces islamic law and traditions in an authoritarian way. They think love for democracy is natural, universal, inherent.

indeed. and that's why those 'leftists' invaded iraq and afghanistan to bring the light of democracy into their lives.

oh, wait a minute...