Reply to R. on the Arab 'movie' protests

What does this have to do with Bush?  Seriously.

You have countries in the Arab Spring who said they'd had enough of their current leaders.  What's so scary about it from the neocon/Bushites point of view is that we didn't instigate it.  But in fact the neocons were hoping that democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan would lead to a new wave of democratization in the Arab world. Remember?

Well, here it is, just not as we anticipated, not for our reasons, not on our timetable. And these people are not dumb: they realize that the U.S. gave $ billions to their oppressor in Egypt for decades because he kept the peace with Israel.  They realize that the U.S. didn't give a shit about human rights in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere. They realize we were willing to tolerate their oppression for our own geopolitical aims.  

So now we expect them to see us as "allies" because we're all "democratic" brothers now. Not so fast.  In fact it's us that has to prove we give a shit about them and their democracy, and not vice-versa.  They've endured worse than we can ever impose on them.  They have no fear of U.S. power and we just have to get used to that; hence our threats, tantrums and condemnations don't mean shit to people who have endured torture and brutality for the past 2-3 decades.  

You want them all to put on their tri-cornered hats and start reading Jefferson and Hamilton and see us their allies?  Not so fast.  

Beyond that, they have no idea what "free speech" is about.  They all buy into Islam and Islamic rule.  They don't make the connection between tolerance for other religious beliefs and tolerance for other political beliefs, and the relation to their personal political liberty.  Why should they make that connection?  In many of these countries, religion was the only secret outlet they had to organize and express their discontent, allowed within certain boundaries by their oppressor.  They had no "civil society," as such.  If you know development like I do, then civil society is a prerequisite for a normally functioning democracy.  Elections are the veneer; human organization is the guts and the engine.  That was all killed and missing.  Religion was the only avenue of somewhat free expression in these countries.  And so through religion they have learned to express their political discontent.  Thus today the religious freaks have the bully pulpit, because everybody else was killed or jailed.  That's not going to change overnight.

We can't really begin to understand it; we can only admit that we we don't understand it.  We must keep the dialog open.  These people don't give two shits about our drones and our warships; they aren't afraid of anything because they have been through hell already.

These are the populations we're dealing with.  You can call them stupid or backward, but there are objective reasons for their attitudes.  To shake our finger at them and throw tantrums is useless at best, counter-productive at worst.  We need to start from zero with these people.  They are ignorant and brutalized populations with nothing but fundamentalist religious institutions allowed by their dead regimes through which to express their gripes.  They are about 400 years behind our political development.  We can't expect miracles from them.  Just like you wouldn't expect a torture victim with zero education to lead his country.