ON DEMOCRACY AS A GOOD

If 2011 brought the promise of democracy to the Arab world, in 2012 democratic change appeared to founder on political reality. In Egypt, democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi has tried to gather into his own hands powers far greater that that held previously by Hosni Mubarak, and is railroading through a constitution that many fear will undermine the gains of the revolution.  In Libya and Tunisia Islamist-influenced  governments are promoting laws restricting rights, constraining speech, and maintaining social inequality. In Bahrain a movement for democratic change has been brutally suppressed by the government. In Syria, the struggle for democracy has degenerated into a bloodbath, and one to which there appears to be no end.

From the beginnings of the so-called Arab Spring many people worried that democratic change would bring about the ‘wrong’ kind of governments to power, and would create social instability and entrench political reaction, fears that in many ways have materialized. So, how do those who advocate democracy respond?

NO GOING BACK. THE ARAB REVOLTS AND THE REMAKING OF THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

The brutal, blood-soaked response of Arab rulers, especially those in Bahrain and Libya, to the revolts engulfing their nations exposes the desperation of old tyrants clinging to the past.  But the revolts themselves reveal the extent to which the Arab political landscape has irrevocably changed.

The ‘strong man’ model of rule that has held sway over much of the Arab world for the past half century has rested primarily on two props: the ability to constrain opposition at home, and willingness of a Great Power, America in particular, to shore up dictatorship. Both the internal and external props of autocracy have become fatally weakened.

CAUGHT IN THE POST-MUBARAK WEB

Essays on and analyses of the post-Mubarak world:

Saba Mahmood on the Architects of the Egyptian Revolution

Olivier Roy on why it has not been an Islamic revolution

Juan Cole on how the labour movement drove the protests

This isn’t 1952 but democrats still need to be wary

Eliis Goldberg wonders if it will be a slow motion coup

‘Bread, social justice and freedom. What’s religious about that?‘

Ned Parker on Egypt’s new breed of Islamists

What next for the Muslim Brotherhood after the uprising?

When the Facebook kids met the generals

Nigel Gibson imagines Fanon in Tahrir Square

Jonathan Wright compares Cairo after Mubarak with Cairo after Sadat

Tom Englehardt on the destruction of Pax Americana

Foreign Policy on the winners and losers of the revolution

CAUGHT IN THE WEB

As Egypt teeters on the brink some writing worth reading

Hossam Tanam on why the religious establishments have been the biggest losers in the Egyptian revolt

Asef Bayat on the post-Islamic Middle East

El Mahalla el Kubra: The Egyptian mill town from where the revolt began

And more on how Egyptian workers are striking against dictatorship, from Reuters and the New York Times

The Wall Street Journal on The Secret Rally that Sparked an Uprising

Glenn Greenwald on The Egyptian Mirror

Nicholas Kristoff asks: Why is democracy good for Americans but not for Egyptians?

Joshua Stacher on Egypt’s democratic mirage

Robert Tait’s 28 hours in the bowels of Mubarak’s torture machine

‘You’ll Be Late for the Revolution!’: An Anthropologist’s Diary of the Egyptian Revolution

Mohammed Bamyeh’s First Impressions from the Field

Popular Committees: Between protecting and policing

Justin Elliot asks: What other dictators does the US support?

A REVOLT FOR WHOSE BENEFIT?

How can Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak be eased out of office without causing too much turmoil, or without providing a political opportunity for the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood? That’s the question with which many Western leaders are now grappling. The growing consensus seems to be that what Egypt needs is, in the words of Hillary Clinton, an ‘ordered transition’ to a post-Mubarak Egypt and that vice-president Omar Suleiman is the man to manage this.

The idea of an ‘ordered transition’ that could depose Mubarak without unnecessary violence and turmoil would seem to be something to be unreservedly welcomed. Yet we should be skeptical about the proposals being drawn up in Washington, London and Brussels  - not least because they are being drawn up in Washington, London and Brussels and not in Cairo.

The question that the idea of ‘ordered transition’ raises is this: for whose benefit is the revolt now taking on the streets of Cairo? For the benefit of Western nations? Or for that of the people of Egypt?

THE MORAL CASE FOR MASS MURDER

MICHAEL PORTILLO: ‘I want to put a moral issue to you. If you feel what might come instead of Mubarak might be worse, for them, for Israel, for us, would it be the right thing to crush [the democracy movement in Egypt]?’

DAVID CESARANI:  ‘That is certainly a moral dilemma… If you were to take the wholly pragmatic view, the expedient view of those sitting in the White House and possibly here in Whitehall, stability, the outcome of a Tiananmen Square-style crackdown is desirable and is predictable. If you allow this popular, democratic movement to run unchecked you cannot predict what’s going to happen. But you can predict probably that after a short, sharp massive clampdown, at huge human cost, there will be a sullen stability.’

LET US INDEED LEARN THE LESSONS OF HAMAS

Barely had I written my previous post on Islamism, secularism and bad faith than Richard Cohen in the Washington Post provided a textbook example of the kind of view at which it was aimed:

The dream of a democratic Egypt is sure to produce a nightmare… Majority rule is a worthwhile idea. But so, too, are respect for minorities, freedom of religion, the equality of women and adherence to treaties, such as the one with Israel, the only democracy in the region… Those Americans and others who cheer the mobs in the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities, who clamor for more robust anti-Mubarak statements from the Obama administration, would be wise to let Washington proceed slowly… America needs to be on the right side of human rights. But it also needs to be on the right side of history. This time, the two may not be the same.

What Cohen fails to mention is that one of the reasons there has been such disregard for democracy and minority rights is that the USA has for decades propped up regimes that have denied democracy and ignored rights (often at the behest of Washington). And Cohen’s solution to such tyranny? To continue to disregard democracy and rights, and to prop up authoritarian regimes, because he thinks it is still in America’s interests to do so.