Sand curtain

If protorevolutionary movements across the Arabo-Muslim world tend to remind me of the late eighties in Eastern Europe, this is completely different.

This time it's not about the regionwide collapse of a corrupt system and ideology with a top-down benediction from a pro-reform leader (Gorbachev), but about several grassroot movements challenging local dictators, corrupt regimes sans ideology.

Note that both Ben Ali and Mubarak were already ailing caids. Beyond their political deaths, what matters now is the removal of entourages controlling most of the power in each country.

Of course, nature abhors a vacuum, and fundamentalists would love to step in to fill the ideology void. At this defining moment, most people on the street seem to reject as false the choice between dictatorship and fundamentalism, but most people on the street prefer order to chaos, and uncertainty shouldn't last too long.

Israel nervously watches as Jordanian and Egyptian regimes falter under popular pressure. Muslim friends who could turn enemies, with the benediction of Iran, whose own corrupt regime postponed its ineluctable fall by a few years by crushing popular uprisings at home. Unfortunately, these days, Israeli leaders seem to position themselves as a corrupt regime with some ideology. Not a dictatorship, mind you, but not a bunch of nice guys either.

Barack Obama is a nice guy. Unfortunately, these days, the US leader doesn't seem to be in charge of foreign policy, so huge is the gap between what he says and what the US do. And the poor lad doesn't have one Gorbachev to call if he wants that sand curtain torn down...

So what's ahead ? Probably trouble and uncertainties, but somehow this transitional period has started after WWII and independence wars, and we're closer to the end than from the beginning. Something new will emerge and eventually, something positive. Societies freed from political and religious deviances. Hopefully, the time has come for a true Muslim renaissance.

Right now, most dictators across the globe must have gotten some kind of message. But even supposedly strong democracies should be thinking twice when they applaud successful local uprisings or self-determination processes like in South Sudan : what is a nation in this globalized world, what will be holding its members together in this networked millenium ?

More than ever, each individual will reach for the universal (as a human being), and the personal (identity).

blogules 2011

Red blogule to Condi Rice - is war "worth the investment" ?

Each war has its purpose and the War in Iraq was sold as a war on terror. It proved to be a war in favor of it... and sold through bold lies.

Democracy ? Bush replaced a cruel dictatorship with an even more lethal chaos. Not to mention such collateral damages as the failure in Afghanistan, or the repeated insults to America's values.

I do hope democracy will prevail in Iraq but it will cost much more in time, money and lives than through the constructive ways of the international community, also crushed by this excuse for an Administration.

Let us consider the "investment" in American lives and dollars mentioned by USA's top "diplomat" (and not consider the losses in Iraqi lives, which Condoleeza Rice must consider yet another "wonderful opportunity") : "I don't think it's a matter of money - along the way there have been plenty of markers that show that this is a country that is worth the investment, because once it emerges as a country, that is a stabilizing factor you will have a very different kind of Middle East".

We'll have a very different kind of Middle East, all right. For a start, Iraq will not emerge as a country (as it used to do) but as several countries. Iran will emerge as the dominant player in the region, which could be considered "a stabilizing factor"... but for the nerves of some neocons / theocons.

Fundamentalism will emerge in Israel, Palestine and Turkey, new herds of terrorists will emerge in Jordan. As planned from the start, Christian fundamentalism will strengthen its base in the US and overseas.

I've been telling the same for years on these pages, Condi : this war in Iraq was definitely worth the investment for the fundamentalists who sold it to such a gullible audience.