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Mitt Romney: Arab Spring Could've Been Avoided By Bush's 'Freedom Agenda'
Are you EFFing kidding me. The Arab Spring was brought about by one Egyptian pissed off about the corruption of his country. His self sacrifice started Arab Spring.
I think the Palin/Romney morph is correct. Romney doesn't understand that grass roots revolution is sometimes is bloody and messy and junk. It's not some board room company takeover.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/27/mitt-romney-arab-spring_n_1710038.html
"President [George W.] Bush urged [deposed Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak to move toward a more democratic posture, but President Obama abandoned the freedom agenda and we are seeing today a whirlwind of tumult in the Middle East in part because these nations did not embrace the reforms that could have changed the course of their history, in a more peaceful manner," Romney said.
Romney argued that with the rise of democratically elected Islamist governments in some of the countries undergoing revolutions -- Egypt and Tunisia in particular -- the Arab Spring has turned out to be less of a boon for Western interests than it initially appeared.
"Clearly we're disappointed in seeing Tunisia and Morocco elect Islamist governments. We're very concerned in seeing the new leader in Egypt as an Islamist leader. It is our hope to move these nations toward a more modern view of the world and to not present a threat to their neighbors and to the other nations of the world," he said.
I think the Palin/Romney morph is correct. Romney doesn't understand that grass roots revolution is sometimes is bloody and messy and junk. It's not some board room company takeover.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/27/mitt-romney-arab-spring_n_1710038.html
"President [George W.] Bush urged [deposed Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak to move toward a more democratic posture, but President Obama abandoned the freedom agenda and we are seeing today a whirlwind of tumult in the Middle East in part because these nations did not embrace the reforms that could have changed the course of their history, in a more peaceful manner," Romney said.
Romney argued that with the rise of democratically elected Islamist governments in some of the countries undergoing revolutions -- Egypt and Tunisia in particular -- the Arab Spring has turned out to be less of a boon for Western interests than it initially appeared.
"Clearly we're disappointed in seeing Tunisia and Morocco elect Islamist governments. We're very concerned in seeing the new leader in Egypt as an Islamist leader. It is our hope to move these nations toward a more modern view of the world and to not present a threat to their neighbors and to the other nations of the world," he said.
Replies
Seems to me his argument is that a bloody, messy grass roots revolution wouldn't have been necessary and the election of Islamist governments avoided had President Obama followed President Bush's policies.
Of course, there's no proof that such would have been the case.
You are correct.
Exactly............
I'm glad I made that point for you, then.
Sent from my SPH-M580 using Tapatalk 2
“all who live in tyranny and hopelessness’’ that “the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.’’ "W"
Within days, the administration was making it clear that this “Bush doctrine’’ would apply even to autocratic US allies like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. When Ayman Nour, a leading Egyptian democracy activist, was arrested on bogus charges and thrown in jail, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cancelled a planned trip to Egypt in protest. Her trip was rescheduled only after Nour was released, and upon landing in Cairo in June 2005, she delivered a ringing defense of democracy and the right of peaceful dissenters to be heard.
There was no sequel to Secretary Rice’s dramatic exhortation in Cairo in June 2005. When Mubarak a few months later claimed victory in an “election’’ so grotesquely rigged that most Egyptians boycotted the polls, US Ambassador Frank Ricciardone publicly fawned over him, going on Egyptian TV to offer “the congratulations of the United States . . . for this great accomplishment.’’ Ayman Nour was thrown back in prison, but Rice fought a congressional effort to reduce the nearly $2 billion in aid Egypt annually receives from Washington.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that any cuts would damage a "strategic partnership" that is "a cornerstone of U.S. policy in the Middle East."
Nothing like fawning and throwing money at a despot to make that Freedom Agenda Ring.
**** brings you another Retroactive Romney History Lesson.
I would guess the countepoint would be that a gradual loosening of the stranglehold by somebody like Mubarak or Qadafi (no idea who the Tunisian was) may have give secular democratic organizations time to develop. Instead, when the balloon went up, the only people with any organization were the Islamists.
Curiously (well not really) Mittens doesn't talk about democracy in Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi; I don't think he knows that Hosni's Egypt was known as an Islamic republic.
The Tunisian guy was from Tunistan.
Tim
And the German Democratic Republic was democratic.
You Repubs have some strange ideas about "democracy". I grant, however, that the GDR operated pretty much like a Chairman/CEO's board meetings. :rolleyes:
George Will
No matter how many times and in how many ways conservatives write this, it never stops being patronizing. Protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Iran are not rising up because President Bush gave them a pat on the head and told them they were worthy of dignity and freedom. Their inspiring courage, their bravery in the face of brutality and despotism, is a triumph all their own.
At bottom, there's a very basic contradiction at the heart of the conservative interpretation of today's events. On the one hand, they argue, the success of the protests vindicate Bush's faith in their democratic yearnings. On the other, they argue, Obama is doing everything wrong. Yet if Obama's doing everything wrong, even as some of the protests continue to succeed, what that really shows us is that we aren't the important actors here. This isn't about us. And it isn't about Bush.
pretty much.
Actually one of the few things that I liked about W was that he funded many of the groups that started the Arab Spring. Once again Romney is talking out of his azzz.
Thumb way up.
Are you talking about the GDR or the middle east? In the case of the latter, the fat lady hasn't even put her make-up on yet.
Tim
The GDR n'existe pas. Care to make a friendly wager as to whether anything even vaguely resembling what we would call democracy takes root in the Arab Spring nations? The Fat Lady might not even be allowed on stage when the Islamists are in charge.
George Will
Democracy didn't have a golden record in the middle east while the west was in charge either. Iran had a short-lived one in the 50's and Iraq seems to be holding the torch.
The bell of freedom ringeth neither louldly nor clearly.
Tim
I have been telling you that for a very long time.
No foundation, no edifice as it were. Aside from (West) Germany and Japan I cannot think of another successful democracy arising from a culture with no history of representative rule, and they are very special cases.
George Will
Every western country previously under despotic rule had successful Democracies after not having a prior history of representative rule.
Some of them France for example took many years and many governments.
I don't see the argument. The driving engine of the human spirit is freedom. Eventually I believe that all totalitarian governments, even Korea will crumble and fall by the way side.
George what was America's history of representative rule? When did it become on man one vote and property qualifications were dropped? When did women get the vote? How about blacks? How is it that Americans don't directly vote for their president?
Tell us about Britain's democratic traditions - I will help. In the 1860's the Chartist movement pushed for extending the voting franchise to regular people. There was a demonstration numbering 400000 people, which actually outnumbered the size of the electorate. It not really a democracy when less than 400,000 people can vote in a population of 20 million.
Fact is that the west preferred strong men types, not democracies, for countries under their sphere of influence; just look at South America, the Middle East and Asia. in the 70's most of the countries in the free world, outside of western Europe, were dictatorships. Just when did the west start promoting democracy?
Tim
There's your answer above, in bold letters, and "eventually" can be a very long time.
The idea that democracy would flourish in the Arab world once tyrants were overturned is naive in the extreme. It did not work for Bush/Cheney/Rummy in Iraq and it is not working in the Arab Spring lands now. Perhaps in a few decades or centuries, but not soon.
France is a good example; so is Germany, whose first taste of democracy after WW I did not work out so well, and Russia whose dance with representative government was even shorter than Germany's. Russia still is struggling to establish democracy and at the moment is backsliding.
For reasons most likely explained by culture and history, representative democracy seems to take root more easily in societies with a long-standing "Anglo-Saxon" or Nordic influence than in ones influenced by central, southern or eastern Europe.
This becomes fairly obvious if you compare how well representative democracy has taken root in former British, French and Spanish/Portuguese colonies in Asia, Africa and the Americas.
George Will
Thank you for providing additional examples for my point that democracy evolves over time, not overnight.
George Will
I find the willingness to give it up frightening.
What is a change of government in Italy would be called a cabinet reshuffle elsewhere.:rolleyes:
But the system, flawed as it may be, works better than in most places that have only been a country for 100 years or so, and less than that in its current geography.
George Will
Explain to me why this is not racist poppy ****.
Again it took almost a century for one of those European countries to develop a modern democracy. So how were the French superior?
In my mind it depends more on the will of the people, the Iranians wanted a government based on Islam, and the leadership. The problem with Egypt was not a lack of desire for a secular democratic state, it was the choices they were provided. This whole Arab spring in Egypt began as a movement to get the Judiciary to separate itself from the Executive and provide honest justice for Egyptians. These reformers are educated and moderate. The Islamic Brotherhood will not be in control of that country once a stronger democratically motivated political party has the time to develop.