After the Tunisian protests took down a government and rocked a region, Egyptians have realized that they have had enough of the autocratic rule of President Hosni Mubarak. The question is what does America do? In the Middle East, nothing is ever simple, and it’s often the case that what seems moral is actually detrimental to our interests. In this case, though, we would be making a grave mistake by not throwing our full support behind the protestors in their quest to rid themselves of tyranny.
The United States has, at best, a checkered past when it comes to encouraging democracy. This may sound like some sort of socialist heresy, but those pesky little things called facts don’t lie. In the 1980s, the US government, through the CIA and in cooperation with the Argentinean dictatorship, gave money and support to the Nicaraguan Contras. The Contras were fighting against the Sandinistas, who had ousted a military dictatorship, and proceeded to win a 1984 national election that outside observers said was free and fair. Surprisingly or not, depending on your point of view, our government of the people, by the people, and for the people did not throw its support behind the popularly elected Sandinistas. They continued to give money to the Contra’s war. Civilians were killed by both sides in the conflict, but it cannot be denied that the US knowingly gave money to a violent insurrection to defeat a popularly elected government simply because the US disagreed with the Sandinistas ideologically. This strange version of democracy was made even stranger when the US began funding the Contras through the illegal sale of weapons to Iran, which we all know is a light upon the hill to the rest of the democratic world.
This support of non-democratic regimes was not a onetime thing, unfortunately. Many of us probably remember pictures of the second President Bush holding hands with a Saudi prince. I’m fairly certain that Saudi Arabia can be considered non-democratic; women can’t drive cars, the judicial system serves only to keep the regime in power, and the next leader will not be popularly elected but will be the eldest son of the current king. The Economist ranked Saudi Arabia as the seventh most authoritarian regime in the world in 2010. Still, the US is selling $60.5 billion worth of weapons to them. And who needs to be reminded of Dick Cheney palling around with Saddam Hussein? Didn’t we end up hanging him or something? How democratic of us.
To be fair, it’s easy to understand why the US supports non-democratic regimes like that of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. The hawks in government have never really cared about spreading democracy, or even keeping democracy vibrant at home. Sure, we have fair elections, or at least as fair as you can get with millions of corporate and union dollars to finance campaigns, but what about the PATRIOT Act? What about the sacrosanct intelligence and defense programs? What about a lack of transparency for the American taxpayer? The hawks have cared most about security, and true democracy is a distant second. In order for us to maintain internal security, it is in our interest to control the outside factors that might damage that safety. Rulers like Mubarak have kept a convenient handle on more radical elements like the Muslim Brotherhood. If that means that Egyptians do not have freedom of speech or can be subject to imprisonment without a fair trial, then that is a trade many in the government have seemed willing to make. It’s beginning to feel like democracy is only OK if your country agrees entirely with ours. Democracy is about trusting the people to make difficult decisions. Some of those decisions will cause other people harm. The gamble, though, is that most of those decisions will turn out for the best. If America is only willing to put that trust in its own citizens, then I guess the American “exceptionalism” that has been talked about is true; we are exceptionally arrogant, misguided, and blinded by our own power.
America needs to leave the Cold War mindset. It is not about good versus evil anymore, if it ever was. Now, it’s all about shades of gray. The most prominent Egyptian opposition leader is not some crazed Islamist. Instead it is Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It seems to me like a man who has devoted a large part of his life to nuclear weapons away from terrorists and rogue states is not all that bad of a choice to lead Egypt. We need to stop listening to the doomsday hawks, and start listening to the democratic voices that this country was founded upon.
