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Posted by on Jan 12, 2013 | 7 comments

About the “Arab Spring”….

I’m currently dealing with a somewhat annoying person in the comments section, and also a bout of insomnia or else I probably wouldn’t bother to do this.  Anyway, it has been pointed out that one story does not a trend make about the emerging fiasco.  Fair enough.  But what about this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this or this?   Or this or this?  A minor fuss was made that the nutcase cited previously was condemned by the Al Azhar, the same way that the Westboro Baptist Church has been condemned by the KKK.  If that seems unfair on the Al Azhar, please look at this, this, this, this, this… you get the idea. Believe you me, I can go on like this all night.

Incidentally, none of those links are from FOX, implying which is apparently the height of intellectual sophistication from wherever this fool hails.

So much for the boring technical stuff.  But there is a wider question: why would anyone, at this stage of the game, act as though the only reason you could be gloomy about the revolutions in the Middle East is a desire to be mean and nasty?  Is it really beyond imagination to assume that some of us would like to have hopes for secular and democratic gov’t in that part of the world, but have had those utterly crushed by the evidence?  I’m reminded of the Hitch’s comment, that the current tendency to assume that the worst possible motive is always the correct one has the virtue of turning every noisy moron into a master analyst.

I’m going back to sleep now.

  • Jeff Hansen

    Most of the people you’ll be arguing with don’t follow Islam or the middle-east too closely. I was hollering about the Muslim Brotherhood being handed Egypt long before Mubarak was toppled & all I knew on the subject came from off-the-shelf pop stuff & short news articles. The feel-good media spin was just too sweet & no one wanted any killjoy details derailing the narrative. The info is easily had but some just don’t want to know. It’s easier reply with some variety of “you’re a bad person” than it is to deal with strong arguments.

  • pablo

    Juan Cole has always been my go to guy on the Middle East. Remember that with the exception of Iran in 1950′s(and that was quickly toppled by the west) no mid-east state has had a democracy. There are going to be birth pains.

    • justaguy

      Cole has repeatedly referenced several Middle Eastern democracies. Lebanon, Israel, Turkey, and Palestinian Gaza are examples. Search the Informed Comment archives for more detail.

      • http://www.facebook.com/peter.moritz.351 Peter Moritz

        Middle Eastern democracies. Lebanon, Turkey, and Palestinian Gaza

        That is sarcasm, for sure?

  • http://www.facebook.com/peter.moritz.351 Peter Moritz

    “There are going to be birth pains.”

    There are no birthpains, that baby is still born.

    Did anybody in his right mind ever believe that democracy was really possible in an Islam infested Middle east, an Islam that has absolutely no truck with anything even close to democracy, and where unfortunately most if not all of a well organized opposition towards existing regimes does not come from secular groups, but from Islamic organizations.

    • http://twitter.com/GerhardPrinslo1 Gerhard Prinsloo

      Just a thought; The organised opposition presumably piggy-backed off popular disaffection with the existing regimes, Hopefully they will find the populace to be less compliant than they had hoped now that that populace have had a taste of people power. Could this be the start of a gradual erosion of authoritarian rule?

      • ThePrussian

        I’d like nothing more than for you to be proved right and me to be proved wrong on this. I’d ecstatically eat crow on this subject. So I do hope that you are right.