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| Arabia |
| Saleh's Last Dance |
| 2011-03-23 |
| [Yemen Post] Who will be able to rule Yemen if President-for-Life Saleh ... exemplifying the Arab's propensity to combine brutality with incompetence... steps down? This is the rumor of fear pro Saleh followers are spreading among the people, therefore, warning that no one else would be able to rule the country after Saleh, and that chaos will follow his departure. My reply is simple. Anyone can rule and fail like Saleh. With more than three decades in power, Saleh would be leaving with not one successful institution within the government circle. Governmental education has been a failure. The judiciary system is corrupt, and governmental hospitals are the least trusted. Electricity is not available in 60% of the country. Public services are the worst in the region and social security has no meaning. So, what is there to worry about if Saleh leaves power. It's not like Yemen is the most prosperous nation in the region! Saleh's regime has caused a 50% unemployment rate in Yemen and six wars in seven years in the north. Only the ruling family and the corrupt circle around them have gained. For those who say I am exaggerating, I ask them to name me one governmental institution that has been successful? Time has come for President Saleh to say farewell to the seat he has sat on for 33 years. He is also accused of being behind the murders of over a hundred protesters killed over the last month. Saleh has for long compared Yemenis to snakes, which is degrading, when he compared ruling Yemen like dancing on heads if snakes. He claimed numerous times in the past six years that he wants to resign but people will not allow him to do so. Well, now his options are limited and will be forced to step down or risk the unsaid. I sat with a senior government official and he was trying to convince me that Yemenis would risk their lives for Saleh. My question is: why would they risk their lives for a president who kills his own people for personal benefits. Isn't he the one there to serve the people and not the opposite? It's time that rule returns to the hand of the people. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #7 Alan has a point about Allan. And that is why I have become convinced that this will need to appear to future historians like a repeat of the thirty years war for Muslims before it is over. After that the dominant culture may be ready to change enough to accommodate the individual desire for personal freedom and political accountability. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2011-03-23 18:21 |
| #6 Mike, I didn't put that clearly. I have no doubt that on a personal level people in the mideast are capable of democratic self-rule. HOWEVER, yeah that famous one again, your analogies were to ethnicities and not material to what I meant. My issue is that the cultural millieu won't permit enlightened self rule. We have heard many times from the leading lights of Islam that democracy is antithetical to Islam. As long as Islam holds sway the democratic enlightenment will be quashed. Until that enlightenment takes hold the rule of the jungle (tribal, familial or sect) will hold. Attaturk tried to forcibly break that model but we now see Turkey devolving into yet another Islamic hell hole. Not there yet but that's the way to bet. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2011-03-23 17:44 |
| #5 Alan, I understand the concern, and I don't deny that Middle Eastern political culture could use some major improvement. (So could the political culture in my old hometown of Youngstown, but that's a whole 'nother debate.) On the other hand, it won't get any better if they never get the opportunity to make it better. It used to be said that the Irish were unfit for self-rule; that democracy was incompatible with Asian values; that Latin Americans needed a strongman form of government because they were culturally incapable of living in a democracy. |
| Posted by: Mike 2011-03-23 15:12 |
| #4 Mike, I agree with everything you said HOWEVER (yes the infamous one)if you agree with that 2nd paragraph how you determine who gets to be in charge, and how your solution differs (if at all) from the law of the jungle. and the people ARE snakes then the result of implementing said paragraph does, in fact, mean that the law of the jungle will win out. That's the way life is in many places in the Arab / Muzzie world and why I believe that we have no business in Libya. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2011-03-23 13:31 |
| #3 The people have never ruled themselves, which suggests an awful lot of blistered hands when they take hold of self-rule. Good point, but, well, simply swapping out Saleh for some new and improved aftermarket replacement dictator won't improve things any. It's kind of like welfare--the only way to teach people to rely on themselves is to make them actually have to rely on themselves. They're never going to govern themselves unless they get to govern themselves. ...But what if the people ARE snakes? It all comes down to the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." You either agree with that or you don't. If you agree with it, then it's just as true in Yemen as it is in Ypsilanti and Youngstown--meaning that Yemenis have the same unalienable rights as you do, and the same entitlement to govern themselves as you do--which includes the freedom to make bad choices and screw it up. (See also, e.g., Chicago, City of, municipal government.) Thing is, if you agree with the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, that's the only morally defensible position you can take. If you don't agree with the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, I'd be curious how you determine who gets to be in charge, and how your solution differs (if at all) from the law of the jungle. |
| Posted by: Mike 2011-03-23 12:20 |
| #2 The people have never ruled themselves, which suggests an awful lot of blistered hands when they take hold of self-rule. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-03-23 08:33 |
| #1 It's time that rule returns to the hand of the people. But what if the people ARE snakes? |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2011-03-23 04:43 |