Who is the unsung hero of the Egyptian revolution? Why, the 43rd President of the
United States of course. (And, presumably, Tony Blair as well.)
Reuel Marc Gerecht leapt to praise Bush in the pages of The New York Times.
‘President George W. Bush’s decision to build democracy in Iraq seemed so lame to many people because it appeared, at best, to be another example of American idealism run amok — the forceful implantation of a complex Western idea into infertile authoritarian soil. But Mr. Bush, whose faith in self-government mirrors that of a frontiersman in Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” saw truths that more worldly men missed: the idea of democracy had become a potent force among Muslims, and authoritarianism had become the midwife to Islamic extremism…Mr. Bush’s distastefulness helped to blind Westerners to the momentous marriage of Islamism and democratic ideas.’
Stephen L. Carter writes in Newsweek that Bush and Obama are being proved correct at the expense of those who thought the Arabs to be beneath democracy.
‘Not long ago, President George W. Bush was considered naive for suggesting that the promotion of democracy in the Arab world should be a staple of American foreign policy. Two years ago, the same charge was whispered against President Barack Obama, when he suggested, in his Cairo address to the Muslim world, that self-government and freedom “are not just American ideas, they are human rights.” True, due to the exigencies of pursuing the nation’s strategic interests, neither man actually pressed very hard for democratization. Still, the more important point is that both were subjected to lectures from experts who insisted that somehow even to speak about democracy and freedom in the Arab lands was to show oneself to be a hopeless romantic, insufficiently hardheaded, out of touch with reality. As of today, that essentially racist assumption is dead.’
The Economist’s Lexington columnist considers Bush’s reputation on Arab Street.
‘So is Mr Bush vindicated? Not so fast. Yes, those who mocked his belief in the Arab appetite for democracy were wrong; he is to be admired for championing reform and nudging autocrats towards pluralism. But keep things in proportion. The Big thing Mr Bush did in the Arab world was not to argue for an election here or a loosening of controls there. It was to send an army to conquer Iraq. Nothing that has happened in Tunisia or Egypt makes the consequences of this decision any less calamitous. The war poisoned the Arabs’ reaction to everything America said or did. Iraq is now a fledgling democracy, but precious few Arabs (and rather few Europeans) believe that Mr Bush invaded Iraq for democracy’s sake.’
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