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So if I understand you right, you want to go back to the "glory days" of the 1960s. Or something. Legolas Send a noteboard - 07/08/2014 06:31:28 PM

View original postThey're not ready for democracy. For democracy to work, and not simply slide into dictatorship of some sort (like it did even in Iran, which was more progressive in 1979 than anyone in the region is today), the economy needs to be fairly stable, there needs to be a sense of national unity and civil society and people need to understand how to properly redress wrongs (hint - through legal means, not by slaughtering the people who wronged you in a clan vendetta).

I would be more inclined to take this argument seriously if you hadn't followed it up by advocating the complete opposite of democracy in Turkey, making me wonder whether you are ready for democracy. What's that you wrote about redressing wrongs through legal means?

It's one thing to argue that countries which are currently dictatorships should develop in other ways before becoming democracies, though to be honest I'm not convinced that it's so easy to build such institutions in a dictatorship hostile to free speech or even free enterprise, like the Egyptian one. It's quite another to argue that countries which are currently democracies should go back to being dictatorships and then maybe later become "democracies" again, with "democracy" being interpreted as "the people can vote freely except when they can't".

View original postBy this standard, only Lebanon in the region came close, and even that is now fraying at an alarming rate due to the Syria-Iraq multistate civil war. Egypt has no civil society and an economy in free fall. Iraq (or what is left of it) is riven by factional hatreds and even within the macrogroups like the Shi'ites there is clan allegiance before any sort of national allegiance (if the Kurds ever got a nation, though, I think they could make it work since their economy has been working, they have national unity and they have civic institutions).

True as far as it goes, but so far I've seen very little from Sisi that's reassuring, and I don't even know who would be supposed to be the dictator that could restore any kind of order to Iraq. Maliki certainly isn't up to the job.
View original postThe Gulf States are not even close by this standard. So yes, I oppose having elections in which radicals can hijack the state and impose worse dictatorships than the old-style ones that have crumbled elsewhere. I am glad they got rid of Morsi and I think it was a mistake for the US to criticize his removal.

Even if one accepts all your other arguments, and does look at things from a realpolitik perspective, I think it was still smart for the US to criticize his removal and at least pay lip service to the ultimate goal of democracy in the region.

With regard to Iran, the only country that followed the pattern you describe, I won't claim to be an expert on its history, but one does wonder what might have happened if the US hadn't been so close with the shah, and consequently had had its hands free to support the moderate elements of the coup against Khomeini's coup within the coup.

View original postTurkey, of course, is another animal altogether. It had a wonderfully secular state with national unity and civic institutions and a thriving economy, and although the generals every now and then ended governments that threatened the status quo by means of coups, it all worked. Erdogan, unfortunately, seems hell-bent on creating a crappy Arab-style dictatorship on the ruins of what Ataturk built, so while I would praise him if he were Sisi in Egypt (because the crappy Arab-style dictatorship we like is better than the abysmal Islamist dictatorship we don't like), in Turkey's case he is regressing the state from a viable democracy and turning it into something worse.

Revisionist nonsense. Not to deny the undeniable achievements of the secularists, however high the price, but Turkey never had a boom as impressive as the one under AKP leadership; the "national unity" you describe was a result of vicious repression against most kinds of minorities, often in ways that would be hilarious if they weren't so sad like the notorious "Mountain Turks"; and there is nothing "Arab-style" about Erdogan's rule, for starters because it's democratic and would promptly end if the people turned him out of office. And the reason that that doesn't happen is in fact excellent proof of why that paragraph of yours was absurd: because a large part of the CHP is too backwards, too paranoid and too incompetent for the voters to allow them back in power despite Erdogan's increasingly obvious flaws.
View original postSo aside from Turkey, where I support getting rid of Erdogan by means of a short military coup and a repositioning of the secularity of the state followed by democracy, I don't support democracy in the Middle East. Not now, at least. If Sisi can help Egypt follow the path of South Korea or Taiwan, I think he will be doing a great service to Egypt.

You might as well admit at once that you don't support democracy at all, or only when it brings your preferred candidates to power, and that otherwise you are a supporter of thuggery and "might makes right" (I'm sorely tempted to bring up Franco again). And as for Sisi, I suppose we'll see; whether ones likes him or not, it does look like his position is pretty solid, so if he really is worth anything he should have ample opportunity to prove it. Not holding my breath though; Nasser's regime (since you seem so fond of the state of things in the 1960s when secular dictators ruled the roost everywhere) sucked, and I haven't yet seen anything to indicate Sisi is even half the leader Nasser was.

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So if I understand you right, you want to go back to the "glory days" of the 1960s. Or something. - 07/08/2014 06:31:28 PM 616 Views
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