by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The short and most simple answer to this question would be to say “hardly” but that might be as little too short.
The truth is, however, that it is a myth that secular democracy is on the march in the Muslim world and, in fact, it would more appear that the countries that experienced the so-called “Arab Spring” now are on the brink, and almost all of them, of being run by Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood and similar.
However, whether we like it or not, if that be the will of the people of those countries we do best not to interfere and to stay well clear of it. Not that America will do that, nor some other countries, as they just tend to decide what is best for the people.
The USA has the attitude that only American-style democracy – forgetting that the US is not even meant to be a democracy but a constitutional republic – is what people are allowed to implement.
This could be seen with the elections in Nicaragua and that returned Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega as president, which independent observers, including President Jimmy Carter, declared cleaner more democratic than the US elections. The US government at the time of that election wanted to declare it null and void as, according to them, Ortega should not have become president.
While the US and NATO countries may have helped to “liberate” some of the countries that were involved in the “Arab Spring” uprising that still does not give us the right to interfere in how the people decide they wish to be governed. Nor, however, should our governments try to give the world the impression, and especially their people, that those states are becoming secular, western-style, democracies. They are not. Simple as that.
Time and again, however, it would appear, the powers that be in the US and the UK, etc., treat their people like imbeciles and small children and intend to tell us fairy tales. This shows how those that are supposed to be leaders of our countries – not that we should have any in the first place – perceive the people.
It is also amazing that they scream about freedoms for people in foreign countries, a free press and a free Internet in countries such as Iran, etc., while, at the same time, they are curtailing the very same freedoms they demand for others in their own countries.
We must allow the people of other nations to make their own decisions without corporations such as the USA and the UK and their masters interfering in those peoples' affairs and whether the form of government that they chose is not the one that the West would love them to chose then that is neither here nor there but it is the choice of the respective people and for them to deal with.
It is time that the West (and I think most readers will understand the countries that are involved in that list) stopped interfering in other countries' affairs and that our military dealt with the job it is tasked to do; defending the realm. Afghanistan and Iraq are not part of that realm. The realm is the country and dependencies but no more. It would make the world and our countries too a safer place.
© 2012
