Will that be Democracy with Corruption?

George Bush and his seemingly parrot-like fellow-travellers Condi and Rumsfeld keep on sprouting forth about bringing democracy to Iraq and other countries in the Middle East.

The evidence on the ground seems to indicate that anything but democracy is taking hold in the region. Certainly, Iraq "conditions" gets worse by the day. The actions of American soldiers just today in shooting into a bus killing its occupants will do little to demonstrate the strengths and benefits of democracy to the peoples of Iraq.

On democracy in the region -

"Progress is shaky, however, its permanence far from assured. While both Western and Arab media juxtapose bombings with democratization, the true threat to both political reform and stability in the Middle East is not terrorism, but corruption; and across the region, the problem is worsening."

So says Michael Rubin in this interesting article from The Daily Star on so-called democracy in the Middle East - but the more troubling scourge of corruption in the region.

Comments

Antony Loewenstein said…

I'd be careful quoting Rubin. He's a neo-con with the American Enterprise Institute, the 'intellectual' big guns behind the Iraq war. Note how he dislikes the Islamists in the region. We agree on that...but if the US truly wanted democracy in the region, which they don't, anti-American Islamists would rule in many countries.
Mmmm, what does a little imperialist like Rubin think about that?

November 22, 2005 2:10 pm

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