Just a few thoughts to reflect on during this period, while the US President’s approval ratings are at their lowest since taking office in 2001. The US, after having been repeatedly attacked by international terrorists during the Clinton admin., were left to be treated as individual criminal acts to be handled by Interpol, we all know now how wrong that was on 9/11.
The undemocratic swamp in the ME, where the only democracy at the time, Israel, (Iraq’s democracy is nascent, but is light years ahead of their Muslim neighbors)had to bear the brunt of Islamist brutality. During this period in time, maintaining the “status quo” was deemed to be the only way at managing the world politic. Democracy, when spoken of at all, was embodied in quaint speeches but never truly emphasized with any meaningful conviction.
Then came the day the shook the world, 9/11, and changed forever how we were to view the safety of American shores. US President George W Bush, like another former US president (A.Lincoln)during a time of crisis in office, came away a changed man, with a sense of clarity of what lay ahead and how to approach it.
No one in the Bush administration is promising an overnight miracle of exemplary democratic oasises in the ME anytime soon, but indeed, the seeds of democratic rule have been sown. Only when the people of the ME no longer fear their own governments, will there be a chance for the ME to develope itself into a productfull and safe region. A democratic ME will see cross border wars come to an end, and a upsurge of human developement coupled with a respect for human/civil rights and states ruled by law.
GWBush will be thanked by future generations to come for the role he’s played in bringing the beginings of freedom and human developement to the ME. The present generation has been poisoned with a bitter *ankle biting* realpolitic elite along with its media, who long for the days of yesteryear, where the balance of powers between East and West held some type of world order. That has proven itself to have been a dangerously defunct concept, which never had the capacity to hold any type of world order….ever.
Only with the collapse of the USSR have we seen a drastic reduction in world conflicts, with far less people dying in conflict than ever before in recent history. From the beginnig of the last century, the world could only claim 22 full democracies, now there is a burgening of 122+, with a major influx of African and Asian states, bringing with them an adversion to starting conflict between themselves and their neighboring countries.
The future will see the ME to be the same as anywhere else, to say otherwise is pure bigotry. GWBush’s vision of democracy for the region in the ME, has inspired many throughout the ME, and hopefully the rest of us here in the West as well, who tend to take their own freedom way too much for granted. KGS
