View From the Middle East, 24 March 2011, The Democracy the Arab World Is Looking For

Has Qadhafi become a great power and we don't know it? So why are the most powerful armies in the world unable to achieve a decisive victory against him, while making all kinds of excuses that they are unable to finish him off once and for all?

Qadhafi is still provocatively claiming that his troops are humiliating the allied troops who will go, in his opinion, into the trash bin of history.

The allied troops, for their part, say that they have stopped the Colonel's troops from advancing on the rebels' camps and that they have forced his planes to remain grounded.  Despite this, the rebels say freely that Qadhafi's forces still surround important areas in Ajdabiya and Masurata.

Despite NATO's insistence that the Colonel's troops are not complying to the announced resolution to halt military operations, these countries refuse to deploy infantry troops onto Libyan terrain, their excuse being that this would violate international law. There is much evidence that international law has been violated by these countries who now refuse to violate it.

The American President is trying, in this context, to convince NATO countries that they have achieved their goals in the current operations.  He said this in order to pave the way for the withdrawal of his country from this alliance, in anticipation of the strong push-back he will face from within the United States regarding a military entanglement and the huge costs which the U.S. knows about from its experience during the war in Iraq.

The American President has called French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron to grant NATO the lead role in applying the no-fly zone resolution over Libya, which would then reduce the U.S. and French role. France opposes this, claiming that handing control over to NATO would diminish Arab contributions, though without specifying what Arab countries are currently contributing.
The withdrawal of the U.S. from what is unfolding in Libya remains a source of great contemplation; is it really because of domestic opposition, because of the costs or for other reasons which are unclear at this stage, particularly after Qadhafi's declaration that the overthrow of his regime would lead to disarray and disruption of the security and peace of the region and in Israel? For if Qadhafi is able to overcome this crisis, will the U.S. want that he submit to their beck and call?

We must not glance over this viewpoint, because the U.S., supported by the West, has forgiven Qadhafi's (what they considered) past mistakes; so why do they not pardon him now? In my opinion, the matter is not confined to Libya and its stance on Israel. What is going on in Libya is exactly what happened in Tunisia, then what moved to Egypt and after that to Yemen. Does this mean that the Arab world is on the cusp of a great political transformation?

It is not a difficult question to answer for us, since we can look at what is currently happening in Tunisia and in Egypt. Without delving into details, we wonder: have those two countries reached a new stage in their history, namely, achieving democracy? Or is this merely a transitory stage on the way toward an ambiguous future? Most likely it will be just a "waiting" period, because the transition from an era of totalitarian rule to a time of democratic rule needs a new political and cultural climate which is not in abundance in the Arab world at the present time.

There are three issues at which the Arab world must take a long look in order to guarantee that it is headed down the right road. The first is education, since the Arab nation cannot begin down the road of progress unless it has a real awakening with regards to its education system. This scholastic awakening in the Arab world is tied to the school.  Many do not realize that the school can be one of the most dangerous means of mental malefaction if society does not see to it that the requisite freedoms are maintained within the schools. We know however that the school in the Arab world is simply a means to get a diploma which then leads to obtaining a job; many people live this way in society. But this is not the case in most western countries, where people in society are not categorized by what kind of diploma they have, but by what they can offer. This is to say nothing of the matter that many of those who have diplomas in the Arab world obtain them through illegal channels and then find their way to the faculty at universities where they compete with those who have genuine  abilities and real qualifications.

This reality, in sum, has led to the appearance of a trend in the western world currently, calling for the establishment of a school-less society, as presented in the book by Ivan Illich, and it might seem that this trend is idealistic and would not catch on in the Arab world. The important thing is that we realize that educational reform in this Arab world is not limited to opening more schools and calling for the development of curricula, but fundamentally, it needs more freedom, whereby students can learn a culture of freedom in the schools and their minds do not become dark from rotten ideas and values. There are legitimate debates in many Arab countries around what the schools are capable of creating in the mind of a pupil who spends his youth there and whose mind is loaded with notions that are not useful in a modern society.

The second issue concerns the economy. We have recently seen an idea prevalent in the Arab world, calling to lay siege upon the rich, to hunt them down and to take possession of their money, in order to transfer it to the people, as the propaganda of this new trend says. But the result has been two-fold, the first of which has been to set up nationalized companies taken over by "big wigs", who then transform the companies to serve their own special interests. The second result has been that many rich folks smuggle their money to foreign banks in order to remove it from circulation in the national economy. In this way, smuggling has become a culture, so now we hear about many presidents smuggling hundreds of billions of poor peoples' money and putting into circulation in foreign economies without the people getting any benefit. Sound and right thinking would be for serenity and peacefulness to take hold in the minds of the rich so that they do not move their money outside of the country. For if it were to stay in circulation in the national economy, many would benefit, regardless of who owns the money, as long as it will be used for the sake of all individuals of the society. This is the situation in many developed countries, where it is of no import who owns the money; what matters is that the money serves everyone. In light of this reality, most will accept paying taxes because they realize that a system of social security will offer most of them the closest thing to a decent life.

The third issue is a social structure founded on a civil culture which isolates no faction or individual of society from another even when this stems from his ideology, religious beliefs or doctrine. For all people are capable of co-existing within the modern civil society as is the case in many western countries, who clearly pronounce it a culture and which they also have named a culture of a multicultural and multi-ethnic society.

The reality which we have explained is the one that is the most conducive to building modern societies, not just for the purpose of overthrowing regimes, then wending one's way toward an unknown future. In this light, Arab societies must ponder not about replacing governments with governments but replacing ruling systems with ruling systems; as democracy does not presently exist in the Arab world, the farthest people can fathom is replacing a regime with another regime, thus to start the old story from the beginning.

http://www.alquds.co.uk/index.asp?fname=today\23qpt698.htm&arc=data\2011\03\03-23\23qpt698.htm

*italics are mine for the purpose of clarification of the meaning

View From the Middle East, Feb.8, Obama and the Arab and Islamic Challenges

Great are the hopes that have been hung on the new American President Barack Husayn Obama, now that he has gained the absolute affection of his citizenry domestically and the trust of the overwhelming majority of the almost 7 billion people of the world. The tasks and challenges set in front of him are greater than what he will be able to overcome successfully, at home or abroad but he, despite what is said about the paucity of his experience, will not be worse than President George W. Bush, who left behind a legacy replete with failures and botched wars. The largest success the new American president will be able to see through is to return the White House to the Americans and to liberate it from the lobbyists who have hijacked it, that is, specifically the Jewish lobby and the weapon manufacturing lobby, and to reallocate to serve foreign policy interests.

If President Obama wants to have his country return to lead the world and rebuild the bridges with Muslims and the Third World countries, the magical recipe for this would be to do the opposite of what his predecessor Bush did, who left the Oval Office with insults chasing him out and without apologizing to anyone.

More precisely, we mean humility, and the distancing from provocation by haphazard and illusory force and power, the respect of international law and imposing the respect for international law on others at the same time and the return of the United Nations to a respected and esteemed status; we are pointing to the values of justice, democracy and equality, all of which, (when followed), are the best models which could help win the minds and hearts of those hundreds of millions who hate the United States and its disastrous policies which have destroyed countries, killed and displaced millions, have made the world less safe and more dangerous and have led it to become bankrupt economically after having been bankrupted ethically and morally. We in both worlds, the Arab one and the Islamic one, do not want the new American president to be on our side and support us on matters; to this endeavor we cannot look forward because of our experience with the nature of American institutions and how they make decisions; we want him just to be neutral and not to stand in the other camp and to wage wars against us on a purely ideological basis.

We want the American president to listen to us as well and to deal with the facts on the ground, from an ethical viewpoint, and on the basis of international law and its rules and put an end to the crimes and violations of those who place themselves above this law and who behave according the the law of the jungle, where the strong prey on the weak and impose their will through the power of the murderous American weapon.

President Obama needs no explanation from us about the Israeli massacres in occupied Palestine and before that in Lebanon; he only needs to have witnessed parts of it in the Gaza Strip over the last 3 weeks. And if he needs more, he only needs to call Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General and to listen to what he witnessed, since he has just returned from wandering around the region and saw with his own eyes the bloody imprints of what the Army of the only democracy in the region and its American made missiles and planes left behind.

We hope that he himself goes to the ill-fated Strip and sees the children whose tender bodies were burnt by phosphorus bombs or the houses who caved in over the heads of their owners or the schools belonging to the United Nations and whose flags were clearly raised and the way in which they were transformed into mass graves of innocents who had sought refuge in them.

President Obama promised to respect Muslims, and this is a good and encouraging thing, but this respect can only become reality through policies of action which translate on the ground; the most fundamental of these are the admission that military decisions failed to solve the crises and to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan and Iraq; to put an end to American support, militarily and diplomatically, of Israel's massacres and to force them to respect international treaties and the resolutions made by the UN.

Pledging to fight terrorism and to defeat it cannot be achieved through war and setting up failed states as Bush has done in Pakistan and Iraq and previously in Somalia; and these are all Islamic states. On the contrary, this can only be realized through calm diplomatic dialogue together with the language of welfare for all as well as putting monetary assistance to work for the benefit of political and democratic reform and peacemaking and not to support corrupt dictatorships in order to oppress its people and to turn a blind eye to the Israeli slaughters or, in the best case scenario, covering them up.

The new American president must realize that his country is no longer the single great power in the world, for it has lost its reins on power; the time is past when it would decide to wage wars and recruit allies, through persuasion, intimidation, or fleecing, and use international organizations to provide a legal cover for its wars. For there are world powers on the rise, such as China, Russia, India, and Brazil, and one goal unites them: usurping the Unites States from the throne of power while making itself the judge of the potential of the people of the world.
We do not for one second doubt the intelligence of the new American president and the power of his character, for he does not for one second hesitate to interact with his adversaries and opponents as well as powerplayers and including them in his administration, such as Hilary Clinton and Robert Gates and Joe Biden. But what he is deficient in and what we hope, is that he uses logic in dealing with the burning international issues. Among them: negotiating with Iran and other movements such as the Taliban, Hamas and the Iraqi resistance. For all previous empires have negotiated with those whom they considered terrorists; security was only achieved in the streets of London after the British government negotiated with the Irish Republican Army.

Sending additional troops to Afghanistan will not produce victory nor stability there; it may yield totally opposite results. For Afghanistan is not Iraq. Creating "Sahwat", or Awakening Councils, was a decision that proved to be a failure in the past and will not be successful in the future. More troops means more defeats and losses in the ranks of the foreign troops. And the few security successes that have been achieved in Iraq because of this strategy might be "temporary." Who believed that the Taliban and Al-Qaida would return with such force to Afghanistan 7 years after its infrastructure was destroyed and its members scattered because of the American occupation and NATO forces.
We don't want that the new American president start issuing decisions; his seat in the White House isn't even warm yet. But it can be said that he seems genuine when he speaks, and his intentions for "change" are positive indicators. We believe that the ruling American "institution" might not grant him the freedom to maneuever which would allow him to transform his intentions into actions on the ground. The one thing that pleases us is to see George Bush leave the ring with a crown of ignominy, not saying sorry to anyone, his hands stained with the blood of the children in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine; it is enough that, after eight years, he has failed to achieve the great mission he promised to achieve, to arrest or kill the leader of Al-Qaida or his second in command or ally Mullah Muhammad 'Ummar.

http://www.bariatwan.com/index.asp?fname=2009\01\01-22\21z50.htm&storytitle=ff%C7%E6%C8%C7%E3%C7%20%E6%C7%E1%CA%CD%CF%ED%C7%CA%20%C7%E1%DA%D1%C8%ED%C9%20%E6%C7%E1%C7%D3%E1%C7%E3%ED%C9fff