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| Africa North |
| Bush May Have Set Arab Revolutions in Motion |
| 2011-01-28 |
| The revolution may have started in Tunisia where ongoing protests forced the country’s foreign minister to step down Thursday. It then spread to Egypt on Tuesday, taking aim at the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak. And now it has migrated to Yemen, where tens of thousands of anti-government protesters demanded Thursday that another U.S. ally step down: Yemen’s president, who has held power for 32 years. But the spark for this wave of revolutions may have started during the Bush administration when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a seminal speech at the American University in Cairo: “For 60 years, the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East — and we achieved neither,” Rice argued during her 2005 speech which came across as a direct challenge to the Mubarak regime, a regime that receives billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid, the second highest after Israel. “Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.” The Bush administration’s argument was that if the people of the Middle East don’t have political freedom then Arab youth will be pushed into mosques where they are readily recruited by Al Qaeda. President Obama tried to pick up the baton — with another speech in Cairo shortly after he took office. “All people yearn for certain things — the ability to speak your mind and have a say how you are governed,” President Obama said in his June 4, 2009, outreach to the Muslim world. “Government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.” But Obama failed to mention this week’s Egyptian protests in the State of the Union address. And in her first remarks after the Egypt riots broke out, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at first looked as though she were siding with stability at the expense of democracy. “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable,” Clinton said. The next day the administration did an about-face, calling for the Mubarak regime not to block social media websites, a weak endorsement of the protesters, according to Middle East experts. “I think they are at sea,” said former Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller, currently at the Woodrow Wilson Center. “I mean, the paradox here is that the Bush administration that made this a priority, didn’t have or didn’t witness, preside over the kinds of changes that are now possible in this region and I don’t think the administration frankly knows quite how to respond.” As evidence, Pentagon officials met with top Egyptian military leaders at the Pentagon Thursday. The previously scheduled meetings will continue until next Wednesday. The Obama administration reluctantly inherited the Bush administration’s call for democracy in the Middle East. “I think the Obama administration came to office with a much more nuanced view of the region. They were not interested in engaging in regime change,” said Miller, author of “The Much Too Promised Land.” “They wanted a low-key approach to what appeared to them the cookie cutter ideological approach to democratization in the region.” The State Department was slow to embrace the Tunisian protests as well — then just one day before Tunisia’s president was forced to flee his country for Saudi Arabia, Clinton gave a speech in Doha. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #13 Oooh dat ol' debbil Bush |
| Posted by: notascrename 2011-01-28 22:30 |
| #12 I wouldn't blame the Feds. The Chinese have been running their printing presses for a while too, and using the proceeds to subsidize their export industries. So they get a much higher "multiplier" effect than we do from the same thing. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-01-28 21:51 |
| #11 For a guy the left called a chimp-like idiot, Bush sure seems to have put in action a lot of complex conspiracies that work even years after he has left office. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2011-01-28 21:39 |
| #10 Bernanke did it - The Fed, Food Riots, and China |
| Posted by: CincinnatusChili 2011-01-28 19:33 |
| #9 It is true. Inflation run amock. Food prices are twice as high as last year. Energy prices also very high. Gas. Basically, everything costs more. That alone can bring pressure against a ruling coalition. |
| Posted by: newc 2011-01-28 17:35 |
| #8 The direct cause is The Bernank and his monetary policies which are exporting inflation to all parts of the world The other 'direct cause' is the man who re-appointed Bernanke in 2009 and who has been completely asleep at the wheel as far as the US economy and debt crisis go. Obama allows these monetary policies, either out of malice or ignorance. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2011-01-28 17:14 |
| #7 Most people of the Middle East don't seem to want political freedom, just the freedom to lord it over, abuse and/or kill some kind of underclass, the Jooce, infidels, blasphemers, furriners, uppity women, etc. I don't expect much good to come out of the revolutionary fervor there, just more of the same with different labels. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2011-01-28 16:50 |
| #6 The direct cause is The Bernank and his monetary policies which are exporting inflation to all parts of the world because of the reserve status of the dollar, unlike what happened in Zimbabwe, for instance. The solution is for them to cut their parity with the US which will drive up their currencies. This will make their imports more expensive and push the dollar down further, which I think is what The Bernank want to happen. As the Chinese say, we live in interesting times. |
| Posted by: tipper 2011-01-28 16:38 |
| #5 I was waiting for the "how can we blame this on the Bush administration" angle to make itself seen. I smell Iran's stinking hands all over this. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2011-01-28 16:22 |
| #4 Anti American dictatorships generally develop pro American populations in time. Pro American dictatorships are likely to develop anti American populations if we are not very careful. Having said that we can stop all the innocents led by thugs crap, and worrying about collateral damage so much we put our own military at greater risk. When they are a hostile democracy you know where they stand. |
| Posted by: Rjschwarz 2011-01-28 14:55 |
| #3 It's all Bush's fault! /s |
| Posted by: tipover 2011-01-28 14:19 |
| #2 Civil war on a global scale??? |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2011-01-28 13:54 |
| #1 And here I thought it was the rise in staple foods prices. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2011-01-28 11:27 |