The fatalism in the Western press about the unrest...

[Os Cangaceiros]

So I was reading Niall Ferguson's (yeah, I know, my own damn fault right) take (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-03-20/niall-ferguson-obamas-indecision-about-libya/) on Libya recently. Not much that you wouldn't expect, but this:


As I’ve said from the outset, a peaceful transition to Western-style democracy in the Arab world is, of all the scenarios, the least probable. The more likely outcomes are (a) 1848-style restorations of the old regimes; (b) a descent into protracted civil wars; (c) Islamist takeovers; (d) a regionwide Sunni-Shiite conflict. By the way, (b), (c), and (d) are not necessarily mutually exclusive. They may be a sequence of events.

irritated me. It's indicative of many reports I've been seeing still about how people in North Africa & the Middle East need a firm hand governing them, lest everything devolves into a sectarian slaughter and/or Islamic theocracy. These are the same pricks who, just a few months ago, would've said that there's something engrained in the "Arab character" that makes them amenable to such dictatorships, and that revolt would never happen.

Don't really have much more to say besides that...just wanted to vent.

[erupt]

Those are the same people who get paid to say what the higher-ups want them to say. Most political commentators are the propaganda whores of the U.S. Congress, among other elitist institutions.

[PhoenixAsh]

See..the problem is not that this is based on the fact that Arab nations somehow need a strong hand...but simply that that strong hand has halted the normal course of political evolution and did not aleviate the existing tribalism and tribal feuds in the region.

Taken that very simple principle and the fact that the whole things was hijacked by imperialist forces whose interest it is to devide and fractionalise the rebels and the country within a contained system of unrest and destability....or create another controlable dictatorship....

[Os Cangaceiros]

He's not talking about Libya alone. He's talking about the entire Arab world.

[Red Commissar]

Yeah, I've noticed that too. It began with the events spreading into Egypt from Tunisia that I began to see some of these scenarios being thought up. In Egypt's case, we saw ALOT of warning about violence directed towards christians and a possible take over by the Muslim Brotherhood (It's going to be llike Iran all over again! was the common one).

This is just a means to get people less enthusiastic about the events and thus less likely to be angry if the US gets involved in some way. It is interesting to see how the American press has been covering events here compared to the events that spread across Eastern Europe during the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. AFAIK none of them offered alarmist scenarios of what could happen if the old regimes were overthrown- it was all about freedom baby. ;)

[black magick hustla]

So I was reading Niall Ferguson's (yeah, I know, my own damn fault right) take (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-03-20/niall-ferguson-obamas-indecision-about-libya/) on Libya recently. Not much that you wouldn't expect, but this:



irritated me. It's indicative of many reports I've been seeing still about how people in North Africa & the Middle East need a firm hand governing them, lest everything devolves into a sectarian slaughter and/or Islamic theocracy. These are the same pricks who, just a few months ago, would've said that there's something engrained in the "Arab character" that makes them amenable to such dictatorships, and that revolt would never happen.

Don't really have much more to say besides that...just wanted to vent.

in lybia the revolt is definitely carved along sectarian tribalist and islamist lines. i don't think decomposing capitalism has any room for more liberal democracies imho

[ComradeOm]

It shouldn't be surprising that Ferguson and other establishment figures are worried: most of these tottering or collapsed regimes have been Western allies for decades. In the Arab world the ancien regime is crumbling and this makes old orders elsewhere nervous. At the very least there is nervousness as to what the future heralds while there also remains a basic belief, and this is most certainly not limited to the likes of Ferguson, that the Arab people are simply too backwards to create better societies for themselves

There is currently no consensus in the West as to the approach to this wave of political revolutions (and Ferguson is perfect correct to reference 1848). Its ranged from support of repression in Bahrain, to lengthy hesitation and wavering in Egypt, through to panicked intervention in Libya. There is no single Western approach and no masterplan: people simply don't know what to make of this shift in the region. So they fall back on racist stereotypes and established narratives. Its all a symptom of a deep unease and uncertainty

[erupt]

I could be wrong, but I fail to see anyone worse than Col. Gaddafi. Talk about a dude not in touch with reality.